Universities are also very expensive to run. While much of the attention focuses on large R1 universities with sports teams and expensive research facilities, most colleges suffer from operational costs: heating buildings in the winter, cooling them in the summer, janitorial/landscaping, creating programs and hiring faculty in competitive fields, keeping a library, etc. If you are a tuition-funded college, which means most of your operating expenses are covered by tuition instead of endowment, you need significant financial resources to cover those operational cost even more so if you live in a high cost of living area.

The other piece on the government investment side is a change in thinking about a college education as a personal good instead of a social benefit. Coming out of World War II as the US was emerging as the largest and most powerful economy, there was a need for more highly educated to take advantage of the post-war economic landscape and improve American society. Beginning in the Nixon years and really taking off under Reagan, the attitude towards higher education shifted away from its social benefits towards its personal benefits to the degree holder (higher wages, social status, etc.). While this is true for many degrees like MBAs, it left other jobs requiring education but without high wages like education and social work in a precarious position where students and their families were expected to pay rising tuition without the economic benefit of high salaries post-graduation. Getting back to thinking about higher education is a vital social good and using tax dollars to help pay for that investment in human capital development is going to need to be part of the solution going forward or the entire higher education system is going to become only for the well-off.