“Getting rid of required living on campus and meal plans would help reduce costs a lot.”
Getting rid of the over abundant over paid administrators would do more than anything else to bring down costs! I know one state system where the universities have so many administrators that they need a separate administration of administrators structure! And at least a couple of the universities in this system are over enrolled, busting at the seams, have an absurd student to faculty ratio which adds angst to the fact that students are routinely closed out of classes and the administration is too pre-occupied with trying to reduce expenditures on teaching to do much else.