There are plenty of people on HN who likely would not have made the cut in a EU country.
I believe that what's actually happening with US higher ed supply is that we stopped founding large research universities. Many of the great public schools were endowed using federal land[1] and eventually the government ran out of valuable agricultural land.
Student tuition has replaced a lot of government funding. As we can see it has gone to administrative spending. Do you think new unis would fix that?
Obviously, rising administrative overhead is due to cost disease, and misc adjacent theories, like Graeber's bullshit jobs).
But I haven't seen anyone discuss the corollary of "keeping up appearances". Parents now spending ~$3,000 per credit hour (non-resident) have high expectations. Better housing, better food, better amenities, responsive office staff, etc. All that cruise ship caliber fluff needs that much more bureaucracy.
I would be very interested to see any research discussing the reasons for this difference and whether cultural expectations account for any of it (expecting a degree on the employer side driving up demand).
How would you remedy that?
Access to education seems higher in the US as-is though it is still in perfect. I am one of the people the US system left behind. Not sure how to get back to school.