The Double Inflation Principle: Why the Indian Degree Got More Expensive as It Became Worth Less

In India between 2010-11 and 2024-25, the price a private college charged rose at 10.2 per cent a year while the pay a new graduate earned rose at 2.6 per cent and fell by 30.3 per cent in real terms. In ordinary markets, when a good becomes more common its price falls. Here the opposite happened: the number of degree-holders grew by 38.5 per cent, the number of institutions by 31.9 per cent, the gross enrolment ratio from 21.1 to 30 per cent - and fees doubled in real terms. This paper names that contradiction the Double Inflation Principle: a market failure in which credential devaluation accelerates tuition inflation through an escalating positional arms race. On a new 15-year panel of 50 named private colleges - every 2024-25 fee published, six fee histories published, the remaining paths reconstructed and used only as a validated simulation device - every hypothesis is tested on published data alone. Reputation band and stream explain 84.5 per cent of the variation in observed fee levels; across eight published fee histories the wedge over the cost floor rises with positioning intensity (exact permutation p = 0.053); the premium segment compounded 115 per cent of excess price over the cost of running itself, and that credential value per rupee fell to 63-78 at the top of the market. A value equation closes the loop: every rupee of excess price is, by arithmetic, a rupee of value destroyed, which pushes the next cohort upmarket - CAT registrations rose 61.3 per cent - where the sellers of the better signal raise their price. I prove the loop's fixed point, estimate its gain, and report every null result honestly.