>At the college I teach at it is clear that we are marketing to students who should not be going to college and shouldn't realistically expect to get a degree.

It seems like almost all 4yr colleges do this to some extent nowadays. Freshman lecture halls with 500+ students and one adjunct faculty ratio are a money maker. Capstone classes with 40 students and one tenured professor are a money loser. You'd have to hire really bad bean counters to miss the obvious way to exploit that situation for monetary gain.