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Let's see. First, federal and state tax money to state colleges/unis declined dramatically. So tuition had to go up.
Then, Americans decided everything had to be a goddammed business and quantified, so learning for the sake of being a better informed citizen went out the window, in favour of how much money will my little angel Johnny or Sally make. Then that means Johnny and Sally become customers, not students, and when Johnny and Sally want the most state of the art living facilities and amenities on campuses, the CEOS (er, presidents) of universities entered into wildly ridiculous deals with towns and cities to build these stupidly expensive facilities.

Then the adjunctification of the university system occurred where universities decided, damn, all the money on buildings is crippling us, so no more hiring faculty to long term contracts, instead let's create a perpetual underclass of poorly paid academics who have to cobble together 6-7 gigs just to not starve or live in their cars and while your kid's tuition is going up and up and up, fewer and fewer professors are actually on permanent contracts. Then, universities decide to just focus on training in fields that "make money".

The education system in the US is in shambles at every level. I left a research-intensive university in 2022, of my own accord, because no senior faculty could get internal funding for research (and external funding in my field is almost non-existent). They wanted to raise my teaching to an unsustainable level and cut my research and I noped the hell out of there and moved abroad. A year later 170+ of my colleagues, most on permanent contracts (aka with tenure) were fired because the budget had been so mismanaged the university was something like $75 million in debt.


ETA: Sorry this wasn't really directed only at you