Yeah, public universities in the US are often comparably priced for in-state students--after financial aid does all their clerical bullshit--to the prices in the 70s and 80s, adjusting for inflation. And you can't replace the experience of being amongst other students, professors, club members, etc. who are all contributing to the ensemble of your intellectual and personal development. Sure there are things you can find in the library, but oftentimes you won't be embedded directly with those who are working on these problems, and you won't be thinking about/discussing them on a day in, day out basis.

Most private schools are heavily discounted from their advertised price--currently well beyond 50% discount on average (see below)--so don't focus too much on sticker price. The old wisdom among the college marketers was 'high prices [i.e., tuition sticker prices] send a signal of quality in the market' and that worked for quite a while. ('Ha! I got a great education and a great discount!') The Forbes article might suggest that's not the case any more.

https://www.nacubo.org/Press-Releases/2023/Tuition-Discount-...

Does the tuition depend on the course?

No...I've heard of this happening in Australia. Its a very sad state of things, but even if they wanted to do something like that, it would be impossible, since American universities are organized usually into just two or three colleges (School of Arts & Sciences being the largest, comprising of everything from CS to English to Physics to Psychology; then there's usually an Arts school--music, painting, etc.--and/or an Engineering school and/or an Agro/environmental sciences school), and you share courses with everyone in your college, and the majority of your classes are not actually for your major, so most students end up learning a great breadth of things and engaging in pet interests (I myself was always interested in historical linguistics). If you charged less for a CS degree, you'd just get a lot of shitty CS students who are only in the major because they want to do something else. And oftentimes engineering/arts degrees are more expensive anyway, since they are seen as purely professional training.

That’s rare in the US. Generally a credit hour has a fixed cost + incidentals like textbooks or occasionally lab fees.

I remember a 1 credit hour horseback riding class having a rather steep extra fee attached to it.

Typically not. Book and lab fees do vary, however.

i will say - the merit-based scholarships have dried up a bit though.

It's true, unfortunately. If we had more funding for public universities, the aid would be re-appropriated, but for now they're struggling to make it affordable for students who are just "average."