My son is currently pursuing an engineering degree and after seeing what he's dealing with I'm strangely ok with taking the education for free. At least the general math and science requirements stuff. Those classes can be taken at a community college for a fraction of the cost you pay at university and they transfer just fine.

What do you get for a fraction of the cost? An online class where the teacher may provide a weekly pre-recorded video lecture and maybe some scribbled notes. At best. At worst its just canned homework questions from the book of contrived, academically difficult for no reason, stem problems. Then a couple of tests using questions from the back of the same book. How much effort is the teacher really putting in? What's the salary for this type of expertise?

In reality American students are being taught by Indian students via websites like chegg and similar, and when all else fails; symbol lab.