Just seems like a good video story, show some water slides and scream “college costs too much”.
Beach type access to a pool is often part of making a pool more accessible to those with disabilities. Adding a bit of sand won’t cost millions. a 45 person hot tub for a college with 20,000+ students is OK. Those lazy rivers looked packed with students in the video, so per actual person served cost per usage might be higher than say a basketball court.
If you can attract more students especially full-pays, maybe this makes sense, if not, it’s that institutions problem.
Since I doubt these were built due to taxpayer referendum, I guess the question is, are the costs at these schools (cost = tuition + taxpayer subsidy) rising at an above average rate. For individual students, the decision becomes nice stuff vs. maybe academics and COA vs other schools without these amenities.
In a hot climate, I don’t think a leisure pool is a luxury amenity, and maintenance costs will be lower (also note that the atrium style pool enclosure in one or more of those videos is very energy and building cost efficient, especially if excess heat and humidity can be vented out through the roof in summer). Lazy rivers are just so popular in the south that this almost becomes microaggression against southerners. A hockey rink is a northern luxury, I am sure there are more.
I think the affordability of state universities to all their citizens needs to be addressed at the state government level, vote for someone who finds this a priority and negotiate what is affordable for your state (middle class at $20K too high, etc). Stop voting for people who find education to be a convenient source of revenue for other things and stop voting for people who just are cutting everything to reduce taxes.