Discuss OronD's answer to: Break Even

OronD, that is the arithmetic but not the reality.  Not all universities have the same charges. 

MIT charges about $375.00/credit hour/resident (depending on major) and Harvard might charge $425.00/hour/resident for the same class.  By far the most expensive school on the planet is Sorbonne (Marseilles) which charges half again as much as their Paris campus. 

A community college, with its limited resources and manpower might charge $100/trimester/resident credit hour, setting tuition for an average 12-hour load at $1,200.00.  Books and labs will be extra.  You will find that incidental expenses can be anything BUT incidental.  Over the year they might charge $3,600.00, plus books.  Few community colleges provide dormitories but they will provide daycare for the children of students. 

$3,600.00/student will not keep the doors of a university open.  We have much more advanced material, five or six collegiate sports, research projects to fund, scholarships to provide, and teachers to pay whose salaries might be 3.5X that of our community college counterparts -- because the work is that much harder and takes people who are that much better.

Land-grant institutions have revenues from their land which makes the difference.  That will keep their doors open and fund their vital research -- which in turn attracts graduate to postdoc and multidoc students. 

We get some funding from Department of Education and from property tax trickle-down but that is not considered reliable enough to maintain a quality program.

That is why we have scholarship drives and benefit concerts.  We also pinch pennies until they scream. 

Financing a University is not an exact science and we cut costs by the sheer resourcefuness and creative time sharing of our dedicated instructors.  Either way finance committees must often jokingly refer to their crystal ball and tarot cards to guess at what it will take to keep the program viable.