If you approach college as a consumer of the information fed by professors and books, the Public Library approach is probably a great value proposition (though I'd question whether that $1.50 provided any value at all... :-) ).

However, a good education is much more than this. It includes the opportunity to engage in back-and-forth discussions with professors and classmates, building social and professional networks that can pay innumerable dividends, and to pursue experiences that aren't immediately related to career advancement.

College shouldn't merely be about vocational training. While that's one valuable outcome, there is much more that can be gained. Of course, many colleges (and individual students' experiences) fall far short of this—I wish I thought this way when I was in school, and didn't just see it as another hurdle to full adulthood—but that doesn't mean that the concept is flawed.