>But that won't happen in a society predicated on greed, selfishness and short-term outlook.
The tuition costs are high exactly because of that thinking. We want to be "generous" and not "selfish" so we write a blank check (that is a combination of grants and loans) to colleges, so colleges just raise their rates every year and hire non-instructional staff to justify the expenses. Only a small fraction of the employees of Harvard are actually instructional staff, and that includes adjunct faculty:
https://www.univstats.com/staf...
2,455 instructional staff x $193k/faculty = $474M for instructional staff
19,178 non-instructional staff = x $91,111/staff = $1,747M for non-instructional staff
31,345 students (undergrad + grad). Cost of instruction per student - 474M/31k = $15,290 per student in tuition if they are only paying for instruction. Yes, that's a bit unrealistic given the cost of faculties and the need for deans and so forth, but it's a good baseline estimate for how much it should actually cost. **Non-instructional staff adds another $56k/year in costs per student**. This is absolutely ridiculous.
You could fire 90% of the non-instructional staff and not notice any difference to the quality of education, and charge $20k a year instead of $65k a year. Or you could just, you know, spend $20k/year to hire your own personal adjunct faculty to teach you everything you actually need to know. Because that's what Harvard pays adjuncts who teach 6 classes a year.