The majority of college courses can be taught online at very minimal prices. There are some courses in science and engineering and very particularly the medical field that need hands on experience in labs and with patients. These courses are expensive to provide because of the infrastructure needed to teach this hands on experience. You can not get that experience in front of a computer. There is also an interactive between professor and students that is essential for certain courses. This is expensive.
Most of the other courses can be provided at very low costs.
The real problem with university is it does not respond to market forces due to insane amounts of government largess to students for tuition etc.
For example in 1966 I could earn enough money roughnecking on the drilling rigs in the summer to pay my room and board and tuition for two full semesters. Today if I were a roughneck I could only earn a fraction of what I would need for two semesters of university. Government programs have totally distorted normal market forces relative to the cost of university.
ps
I earned 25 hours of credit by CLEP exams and another 6 hours in aviation (I was a pharmacy student not aviation) due to my commercial aviation tickets.. I bought the books, studied and took the tests. This saved me the cost of a year in university. I was paying and wanted out as quick as possible! It was my money.
It should be noted that I was not a great student when I first went to university. I flunked out and went back to the drilling rigs for 5 years. When I returned to university with a major attitude adjustment, I did well, and acquired a degree in geology and then returned some years later to get a degree in pharmacy. My own individual work paid for all of this. No grants but I did have some small loans that I paid back early.
We live in a great nation! We must not lose it.
All these schools exist. What infrastructure costs are there to justify the tuition?