Well... it depends. If you're at a research university, your tuition dollars may not pay very much of your professor's salary by the time you add in any government funding and other outside grants, as well as endowment funds. The work they do preparing for class we can argue about, but their research output was very likely paid for with a non-tuition source. And how do we define work done for teaching? Should each student have access to lecture notes? Old quizzes? Final exams? (Professors really hate the last two because then they can't reuse things without rampant cheating, and after a few years in some subjects it gets hard to write truly new questions.) What about e-mails to another student refining an explanation that was given in class? Recordings of discussions in office hours? These are work products from the class you are taking. Careful, you'll have to edit out any portions that have FERPA data...

I can tell you I've watched more than one professor freak out when I explain to them how much access the university has to their work products, electronic or old-school. They don't like it at all. It doesn't make them right or wrong, but this is far from settled to both sides' satisfaction.

Just be aware that when you do drop them, they will call you incessantly for a month. We used to have subscriptions for two cars, then the driving habits changed and we dropped one car. They called for two months quite frequently at all hours asking me to resubscribe. Dropped the other car out of pure spite for such harassment. The fun part is, the driving habits changed because we moved east through a couple time zones but I kept the cell phone number with the CA area code. They called at 11PM several times. The first few I ignored because I was already trying to sleep. Then I got fed up, confirmed with them that they had my current address correct, and asked why they were calling me at 11PM. Threats of legal action seemed to do some good. :)

I think you are assuming this means that not everyone *has the opportunity to go to college relatively easily*. I think that college should be relatively easy to go to for someone who wants to go and is willing to put in a small amount of effort to make it happen. It will always be easier for some people than for others. But not everyone needs to go to college, because not everyone wants to go to college. Some people HATE the traditional classroom experience, and much has been made of other respectable, relatively well paid jobs like plumbing, welding, etc. that are a bit more hands on. Forcing me to extend high school an extra four years with people who don't want to be there helps none of the students. I would argue that until just about all physical labor has been mechanized to a large degree there really isn't a reason for EVERYONE to go to college. (By that point, AI may also have advanced to the point that a lot of desk jobs are no longer needed too, which will force some societal choices.)

To me, one of the biggest problems in higher education is the idea that everyone should go to college. People sometimes just aren't cut out for it at all, and some people would benefit greatly from the "gap year" common in many other western countries where you live life for a while instead of going straight from high school to a university. It helps you focus on what is important. Students can and do burn out too after 12+ years of the exact same thing. The problem is that administrators have a panic attack because OMG ONLY 40% OF OUR STUDENTS GRADUATE ON TIME without considering that perhaps only 40% deserved to graduate. Then comes the administrative bs programs to keep butts in seats rather than actually helping students figure out how to succeed in life. There is no "succeeds in life after college" measure that universities can use to reliably judge how well they are doing, but "90% graduate within 4 years" sounds like a close approximation regardless of relevance. If I spend 4 years slacking off and getting Cs and learning nothing of use, but graduate on time, that is just fine and dandy with the administration because it keeps their numbers pretty.

Please, kids, if you have no desire to go to college other than mommy and daddy said I will be a miserable failure if I don't, DO NOT GO. Full stop. Find a different, creative way to get money and support yourself. If after a while you decide college is a good idea, you can always go back. It might be harder, but it can be done. And just maybe you'll never miss it.

Accessibility. Completely mandatory for government agencies of any kind. Is Google Sites + Drive compliant for people who need to use various pieces of adaptive software (screen readers and such)? Can you guarantee that it will remain so for the expected useful life of the project? I'm betting it would require an SLA, which requires $$$. With something set up in house that you can control, this compatibility can remain at the forefront instead of whatever objective Google has this week that requires breaking stuff but looks shiny.

Not to mention that they usually wouldn't want to make it better anyway. One way publishers make money is putting out new editions of old books. One of my family members is a professor, and he is constantly pushed to put out a new edition every 2 years or so even though not much changes in the history of the world's religions in that time. They're not going to start updating the content for free, unless it makes them look *really* bad. People who actually still read books in this day and age are more likely to get upset about censoring and redacting down the line. I am a bit puzzled as to why they should change things in the first place - do editors really want to go back and find every last typo, or would they rather move on to a new project? Personally I have never declined to buy a book because of a few editorial mistakes, so I can't see when people would want to do this other than to edit out something unpopular.