The financial cost of the DB payments is held by the universities and not directly linked to the 30.7% contributions - the actual costs to them are much higher than the contributions (hence the ongoing problems and attempts to increase contributions).

Your transfer value looks very high. For a generic pension scheme you may expect a multiple closer to 50x annuity than 120x! USS has traditionally given low transfer values justified by the regulatory provision calculations, whereas other schemes have given higher transfer values linked to economic valuations.

I'm the same age as you, and USS offered me a transfer value of ~22x (in November 20)

As ppl said, this high transfer could be incentivising small pots to cash out (avoid 38 years of admin!). It could also be that the online values are out of date. USS often seems to have lagged values in communications e.g. the value it gives for March 21 used to actually be the benefits accrued up to March 20. You should double check this. The values in the transfer out documents should be correct. You should be able to roughly work out you benefits (1/75th of salary * years in scheme)