It's the facilities costs that have truly exploded in the past couple of decades. Every university is in an arms race to build the biggest, most advanced campus possible. They've forgotten that their goal is to be a place of study and instead they're trying to have world-class architecture so they can woo students. Students would go there so long as the damn programs are well run and they have a good reputation.

Just stop the gigantic capital projects and suddenly you've got plenty of capital. Hmm.