As my mother taught in a very large university here in Los Angeles, I don't think many of you understand that it was the government's hand in the education system that made it so unaffordable. The government made the whole loan system and colleges saw they could keep increasing tuition costs as long as loans allowed kids to pursue education at the expense of massive debt. College is essentially a talking, writing and reading endeavor. There are no real material costs considering the availability of online "print" - the "textbook" only costs whatever the publisher/author are willing to sell it at for rights as there's so little cost with an eBook.
The major cost of "higher levels of learning" is the whole advertising the schools do, their sports program and the whole prestige aspect. If you took all that nonsense away, a professor making $150K/year could take a year off of some real world work to teach a class of 30 students (let's assume the students don't change for simplicity). That equals $5k/yr per student. Figure at most $1k for books and if it's a science based class another $1k for materials. USC and Harvard charging $60K/yr - there's some real cheating going on and it's not the students. The whole system is a scam.
We should just go back to trade schools and apprenticeships for the masses. Spending $250K in 4 years while putting out no product only to make an extra $10K/yr over 25 years - what are these people expecting?
Biden will only increase that teacher pay to even higher levels - paid for by taxpayers.
While you're on the right track with the fact that government subsidizing student loans has led to a huge increase in the cost of tuition because it creates inelastic demand, it's simply wrong to say that the main costs of colleges are advertising and sports programs. Colleges have huge administrative cost and the cost of professors is probably the largest expense items, as well as all the other staff-related costs. And the sports programs are huge sources of revenue for big colleges, so it's not like all that money they consume comes from tuition. Most large football programs subsidize the cost of all the other unprofitable sports programs.
By the way, the president has nothing to do with college teacher pay. None whatsoever.
I know just how much college professors make as my mother was one. They don't really start draining the system until they're tenured and then their pay exceeds that of the POTUS is many cases and they receive state pension for teaching at state schools like UCLA and Berkley. That insane pay is not a result of output - those professors are making that money off prestiging - bringing in money from old alumni. My wife's good friend donated $5 million to U of W dental school and was saddened when the school spent it on building a low income clinic... in Bellevue, WA lol. Basically it was a handout for free money to ivory tower clinicians. There are no poor people in Bellevue going to that clinic - such a pork project - but it's a beautiful building.
The lowly professor teaching the classes at UCLA filled with 100 to 350 students at a time is only making about $100/hour. The only reason they keep at that cheap rate is to hopefully get tenure where they can milk the system of state taxpayers. It's not a merit based system.
The only reason you think the sports programs make money from the school is that the school advertises it as such. In reality, when you look at all the cheating that is done by the athletic programs it becomes apparent that they steal tuition. Football players using disabled placards. Priority access to classes for athletes. Discounted meal and housing for athletes. New construction of athletic training/playing facilities that don't have enough income from ticket sales to offset the cost of the construction and property taxes. At UCLA, for example, the new tennis stadium still has not been paid for by more than 32% after 10 years. The budget for planning and environmental studies for the project actually came from the general fund so that wasn't even ticketed in the cost. I know people who work at UCLA in the athletic departments and this is how I know this. You can find articles about similar stories if you dig deep enough, but usually the front page on the newspaper talks about how great the sports teams are for the schools. Remember newspapers and print media make quite a bit from collegiate sports, it's in their interest to feed their narrative. The coaches and managers at universities are usually the highest paid entities in the school and it even makes news on the aforementioned media. You rarely see them putting on the front page stories about their alumni achieving scientific breakthroughs. Let me know when Goodenough becomes as famous as Pete Carroll or John Wooden.
If you think the POTUS has nothing to do with college teacher pay then that's your prerogative. Ultimately the POTUS does pick a cabinet member that become sec of education and that sec determines K-12 schooling agenda which does influence college level pay as well as union and lobbying efforts. California Teacher Association is the largest lobbyist in the US and they vote with one party almost on a 1:1 basis. To think that college professors don't align themselves the same way as K-12 teacher unions - well I guess you've been gone from the school tenure narrative for 70 years. Nothing will get between a teacher and their pension - not even a rape or child molestation conviction. You say something to the contrary and you will be beaten up in the media like the 200 pound 3rd grader sitting on other 3rd graders over by the tether-ball courts. Only in a society where teachers are held to sainthood can a teacher who feeds semen laced cookies to kids be defended by the teacher union that's supposed to protect kids. That narrative carries all the way up to colleges.
BTW all my kids teachers in public school make approximately 30% more than an urgent care physician on a per hour basis. $90/hr for urgent care at Kaiser in California. $118/hr for my kids teachers in K-6.
The difference that the American economy will see is that of change of political party in the president seat but let us wait few days for the eventual winner. 
