> These sorts of costs are not cheap, but they are necessary.
If tomorrow the government decided that every university would have to fund itself on half its current budget would universities cease to exist or would they just be different.
I'd say the latter. I'd agree they're necessary to how a college functions today, but not necessary to what we think of as the core functions that make a university a university.
Yeah I think it's true that some institution are reliant on incredibly high tuition costs, and wouldn't be able to survive. But I don't think that's true of the majority, especially when weighted by number of students. ( Imagine it's smaller colleges that are more expensive to operate per student due to a lack of efficiencies of scale. )
If tomorrow the government decided that every university would have to fund itself on half its current budget would universities cease to exist or would they just be different.
I'd say the latter. I'd agree they're necessary to how a college functions today, but not necessary to what we think of as the core functions that make a university a university.