It begs the question "where the hell is my tuition going?"

I was taking at a private "degree mill" part time classes at $180 per credit hour. The school required 7 students to teach a 4 credit class during normal hours. So at the minimum number of students the school was just making enough money for overhead... Most clases were 10-15 students. It was a private school, so tuition covered almost all their bills, no state funding.

Now ask where sutdents in State Funded Colleges money is going when there are 50 students (and more!) in a class? Where the hell is the undergrad tuition money going if the school only pays "minimum wage" for adjunct or grad school staff?? Where is State and Federal dinging going if Undergrads are paying more than their share of the university bills? It's not gping to TEACHING... And it's not going to "student contact" professors either, and its not "healthcare" or "retirement"... There's a giant money hole in the system.

You sound like you're trying to justify a bad decision...

Outside of the top-ranked flagship state schools -- which carry as much prestige as an ivy in some fields (e.g. in CS uiuc, u.w., austin, etc.) -- state schools are actually by far the best bang for the buck around.

For example, $180/cr is actually not far off from what most non-flagship state schools cost. In fact, there are schools in my state that cost within $10 or so of that. Crucially, all these institutions have quite good reputations in the region, no one perceives them as diploma mills, and they all have great CS departments with a sense of continuity.

I did some reading about the subject when I was still in college, and I gathered that tuition was used to pay the interest on loans the university system took out to fund expansion (e.g. buildings & development) in order to attract more students.