Maybe for the costs to go down, the administrative fat could be trimmed instead.

Especially when you consider that it's gotten to the point where at many schools with the worst and most extreme administrative bloat, there is one non-teaching, bureaucratic administrator for every student.

In the absence of UBI can you blame them? Not everybody can, or wants to, be productive.

Why should those who don't want to be productive be supported by those who do?

Taxpayers end up with bill either way, I think, either directly through UBI and welfare or indirectly through losses due to crime, policing costs.

Europe has a good approach by using subsidies as a more palatable UBI initiative to keep their startups afloat.

University tuition here is state sponsored, the difference is not that great (everything over 10k a year is a cashgrab anyway) You have the "institution rate" aka real cost + milk foreign students tax, and the European cost aka affordable. The university gets a yearly allowance per European student plus a lump sum on graduation (yes this brings graduation rates up and quality down).

The end result is that the average money received is about 60% (give or take 5-10 percent depending on left or right wing politics) of the institution rate so you now know the foreign "tax". If you are over 32 you should also pay the institution rate but it is almost fully tax deductible.

I'm saying the opposite has been my experience.

There's plenty of ways for Universities to lower costs without hurting quality.

There are plenty of open resources nowadays. Many of the paid online only textbooks with inconsistent tooling and accessibility for starters could be eliminated.

Expensive corporate software contracts is another. Access to MS office is nice in theory but in practice many students rely on Google instead AND there are open alternatives that don't have unreliable authentication problems.