because much of the revenue from students now comes in areas (such as housing and dining)
This is a fundamental problem with the business model then.
If I could answer this with a simple answer, I wouldn't be poking around on Slashdot, I'd be selling consulting services to all colleges and universities that also want to answer this question.
So it's somewhat pointless if neither of us can be specific. Are you saying there are no amenities to be cut?
Some of those amenities are 'must haves,' and for many students in the middle of the market for higher education a few thousand dollars a year more in cost is worth it to have a modern place to live, something to do outside of class (like a rec center), and buildings that are not falling down; not to mention excellent food, access to counseling and advising.
If we are calling those "amenities" then we have a definition problem. Put all those things together and you have "a campus". Talking about things besides those.
Yes, the US spends more than many other countries on a degree, but our cost of living is also much higher than many other countries and the BENEFITS of a degree (even in $$ earnings) is higher than in many other countries, too.
Did you look at the list though? We are more expensive by a long shot than similarly developed nations. Same problem with healthcare, nations with similar GDP/capita and we spend far and and away more per-capita. So something is fundamentally broken in our higher education system. My opinion it's the same thing, we expect it to operate like a market but refuse to acknowledge how we've created a wildly distorted market.
To be fair I did forget the key aspect of my plan: community colleges at that point are subsidized education, IE, government supported and basically we would do away with most of the federal loan programs.
I don't have a perfect plan either but we can't have a discussion about the value proposition of college in the US without discussing the costs because the costs are out of control.
Again, just like health care, if most Americans could keep everything about the healthcare in America but the cost per-capita was $7k like Finland, Australia, France, Canada, etc instead of close to $15k then we are having a much much different discussion. Gotta solve that first, it's pretty much the primary issue.