If universities stuck to their core mission and shed their dead weight, bloat, and misappropriation of tuition dollars, I guarantee you that you would see a hug

If universities stuck to their core mission and shed their dead weight, bloat, and misappropriation of tuition dollars, I guarantee you that you would see a huge decrease in cost. It's become a circus and a racket that doesn't even deliver on the core mission, and even actively harms students. Unfortunately, the market has played a role in creating incentives to measure college quality according to the wrong factors. In any case, the thicket of incentives is so dense, and the interests so mutually intertwined, that any reform would be met with kicking and screaming (and lots of rationalization, of course). This university lobby would work overtime against successful attempts to educate the public about what it means for a university to be good, and what sorts of gimmicks make them more expensive. But it is still important to try. It is important to counter the misinformation that's taught in primary school about what universities are about, but that would also entail a reform of primary education by implication, another milieu that would resist reform. It is important that we try. We need a clear and correct notion of what education is for, and then what primary, secondary, etc. education is for. Once there is clarity, it becomes easier to make decisions about how to structure education, what to keep in, and what to keep out. It is easy to see why some may not want to resolve the ambiguity. One avenue that's being pursued is the founding of new colleges that demonstrate what is possible. This is the long haul, but in an environment as entrenched as this one, it may be the only realistic solution.