Costs of operating a college

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Expenses a college has to account for include: Cost of the buildings, taxes, utilities, license, permits, payroll, land, equipment, merchandise, etc. What's there source of income though: students, either directly (out of pocket), or indirectly (through grants, scholarships, and loans). The costs of the operation of a college are upon the student body, which means that the base cost of education from a college is inflated by the cost of the institution.

So as not to produce another thread, lets also bring up the issue of what types of degrees have some necessity of being obtained formally. Here's a list, and feel free to add to it:

Art
Poetry
Biology
Biochemistry
Literature
History
Chemistry
Physics
Astronomy
Computer Science
Plumbing
Carpentry
Electronics
Aeronautical Engineering
Astrophysics
Latin
Spanish
French
Hebrew
Greek
Linguistics
Anthropology
Geology
Geography
Medical Technology
Nursing
Entomology
Ornithology
Avian medicine
Aviculture
Agriculture
Sailing
Wiring
Writing
Etc.

How many of these subjects are worth, or require, a formal college learning experience in order to obtain the same level of knowledge afterward? Which types of fields require formal education due to their inherently perilous risks of malpractice and which don't? In rhetorical terms it sounds stronger to mention such things as medical practice and engineering due to the mortal risks involved, but what of subjects without mortal risks involved? Why waste money on a formal education when it is not necessary to do so?

Another question: How many people, answering personally and individually, need a college bureaucrat to determine what subjects are prerequisite or co-requisite with other subjects? Who has any difficulty in being able to determine, for themselves, that they need to learn one subject prior to another? Also, how many people require guidance from an authority figure as to what they should do and where they should look? How many people are capable of researching such data on their own?

In point of fact, the base costs are not solely on the students. All public schools heavily subsidize education through tax money from the state. Private schools frequently benefit from endowments, which allow them to subsidize the cost of education as well. Research also frequently brings in considerable fiscal resources, as faculty apply for grants that often pay their salaries, and for the cost of educating graduate research assistants.

Okay, public schools take money from both taxpayers in general and their students in particular.

Let's consider the University of Minnesota. According to their website, the cost of an undergrad semester is approximately $6000 for tuition and fees alone and in their four year plans for undergrads they have approximately 15 credit hours average allotted. The cost per credit hour based upon that would be about $400 not including the cost of textbooks for that semester. They estimate an average cost of $500 for textbooks per semester, and if divided by the credit hour you'd have a value of $33 per credit hour versus the $400 per credit hour of tuition and fees. Prior to the removal of the reviews of the aerospace engineering major by students about to graduate, some of the major complaints about it were that the professors were aloof too busy researching their own projects and leaving the students to study on their own anyhow, so at least for the years 2004 through 2009 (that which they had a comments section for students to input their opinion rather than just answer a survey quiz) it would seem to me that if they had just bought the textbooks and studied from them instead of enrolling at the U of MN, they could have saved themselves around $48,000 in tuition and fees, $11,480 in room and board, and instead have spent only around $4,000 in the price of textbooks and supplies for the same education. Now, of course, some of the cost of education may come from grants and scholarships and not just student loans, however none of that is free money. TANSTAAFL.