One thing about the Institute; technical education costs a lot more than a liberal arts one. Equipping, maintaining and running science and engineering labs costs quite a bit of money. Not that I pretend to be neutral on the topic - I’m class of ‘74 from the Institute.
Some companies will give equipment to these prestigious schools.
I had a teacher who claimed that IBM gave their computer to Harvard. It was when IBM switched from WATFOR to WATV. And the old Fortran code needed to be revised to be compiled under the new language.
The way I heard it, Harvard was satisfied with what they had and didn’t want the hassle. They were informed that IBM would not provide support for the old system at all but would give them the new computer. Sure helps bragging rights to a handful of customers to tell them that Harvard has one.
My son went to RIT and it was $23K/year 11 years ago. No clue what it is now, but we get calls all the time as well.
Which is why universities (and especially the more prestigious) are dropping such courses as fast as they can get away with it. I'd make a small wager that actual lab class hours have dropped drastically since you were there.
Lot's of military/NSF grants used to pay for the equipment. Brass tags all over the place.