I’m not really beating around the bush. A university cannot normalize the prices of all of their majors around outlier majors that have more market demand. They cannot also bundle a “premium” package of the college experience (which evidently now involves indentured servitude, which I’m guessing comes after premium room and board pricing?). Check the whole bill, everything is out of whack.

Drop the prices of 90% of majors, that one should be obvious.

Sharing the wealth should be obvious too, but that one isn’t either apparently. So they overcharge, and then don’t pay their own.

It’s massive pricing issue mired in severe levels of piety and self importance. No one wants to replace universities, they want them to stop scamming.

I am arguing this is mostly explained by universities being taken over mba-type managers: launching new products (i.e non-sensical degrees), turning university study into an "experience", ... is all the sort of thing that mba type do and not unique to university (see Boing, Intel, ...)

But the core idea of university remains as sound and essential to a well-functioning society as it gets. From time immemorial you needed gatekeepers to recognised professions who: a) provide hands-on training to the next generation b) certify that a trainer has reached a sufficient level of mastery to practice the profession. Calling this process "selling indulgence" is my issue with your argument.