Most universities staff up to handle as many students as they wish. They have a glut of students.

In this environment, you would expect more universities to flood the market to capitalize on the high profit, but that isn't happening. There is an excess supply of professors, but not universities.

This might be due to regulation, accreditation, high capital demand, and or the inability to create a lean university that just offered specific curricula. Is it so absurd to think a CS degree could happen entirely online and mostly asynchronously?

I don't think so, but it hasn't happened well yet.

So high barriers of entry + inelastic demand because easy credit = no universities created to drive down price.