Paying people more doesn&#x27;t necessarily make cost go up, if productivity makes up for the cost. But I&#x27;m at a loss to see how that would work here: is there any such thing as a more productive adjunct professor? Researching professors can bring in grant money, for instance. Teach larger classes? Other parts of the university system may resist that. There&#x27;s something about a university system that only seems capable of ratcheting up costs.<p>Maybe one reason is that universities never go bankrupt (and colleges only infrequently go bankrupt). There&#x27;s no way to dissect the components of the system and reconstruct them in a better or more minimal manner.