There is so much broken with modern universities and incentives around pricing - why are all degrees four years? Why does a classics degree cost the same as a CS degree when the market value of a classics degree is basically zero?
I wrote a little about it in the context of Lambda School, but it mostly applies: https://zalberico.com/essay/2019/04/08/lambda-school.html
“The current university system in the US is a mess of incentives. Easy access to non-defaultable federal loans means school’s tuition is able to reach extreme heights and competition for this money leads to spending on sports stadiums, expensive dorms, and other things not critical to the success of the students.
Universities also get a lot of their prestige from research and the majority of their effort is typically not spent on undergraduate education. This means professors are not typically rewarded for being (or even expected to be) excellent teachers.
Universities care about their students to the small extent that it helps their brand to have successful students do important things, but they get their tuition regardless of the actual outcome of their students (with a slight preference for them passing classes and not failing out).”