@Rarebear – Here’s a financial report for the University of Texas system, which covers a number of schools.
Tuition and fees paid in to the whole system runs about 1.5 billion dollars each year for the last three years, totaling about $4.5 billion for the period covered.
In the same years, they’ve added over $6 billion to their “net position” due to growth in investments and other funding. That includes a “bad” year of 2016 where they lost $4.6 billion in their investments, so isn’t cherry picking by any means.
They are a state entity, they aren’t paid for by the government, they are part of the government. They have been put there for the good of the people, hopefully in aggregate.
They could have turned a profit without taking a dollar of tuition from the students because they’ve been granted lands that prove profitable, an endowment that proves profitable, and current funding from state and federal sources that cover a good portion of their operating costs for enormous, beautiful, campuses.
Why has in state tuition quadrupled in the last 20 years? Your argument appears to center on what seems to be a false assumption that they wouldn’t charge any more than they have to. They charge what they can, like a business.
There is no huge “where will the money come from” question because they don’t need the money that they are taking.
if any of this is wrong, I’m happy to be corrected, because it makes me angry