Colleges charge fees more to make money than to screen candidates. We don't want to have the job market profiting from the unemployed.
Stanford University, for example: $90 fee X 20,000 applicants = $1,800,000
Stanford University, for example: $90 fee X 20,000 applicants = $1,800,000
I would have assumed that my universities' costs would be offset by the $40,000 I'm paying every year for the next four years, rather than erroneous fees that aren't tallied in the advertised total cost of attendance.
Basically, your tuition could be even higher if they dropped the fee to apply.