If your apartment building had an alumni foundation that brought in substantial revenues it would. Also RAs do paperwork and some amount of administrative task

If your apartment building had an alumni foundation that brought in substantial revenues it would. Also RAs do paperwork and some amount of administrative tasks that universities would have to hire a clerk or someone else to do. RAs are dirt cheap and it takes surprisingly little funds to make students feel like they're being pampered and money fluttered away on them when in reality it's almost nothing. But later they go "wow the university really cared" and they write checks. Take up the market idea to the students. At most of the campuses they're the ones who control these fees and can chose to lower, raise, reallocate or toss them. Students overwhelmingly vote for certain types of fees consistently across campuses. Apparently they don't buy your market argument and frankly if they vote that stuff in that's their own choice and not much we can get riled up about. (These types of fees are typically not a large part of the overall cost of tuition. It depends on the system. A very few places are just absurd, most are pretty minor.)