The “whole thing” is never cheap. Running something like a university — providing the environment, infrastructure, administration, facilities, compliance systems, equipment, libraries, grants offices, laboratories, and institutional platform that allow professors and graduate students to do research — is itself extremely expensive.
After all, if you look at the fiscal budgets of major economies, public spending on education and research is often much larger than military spending.
The “whole thing” is never cheap. Running something like a university — providing the environment, infrastructure, administration, facilities, compliance systems, equipment, libraries, grants offices, laboratories, and institutional platform that allow professors and graduate students to do research — is itself extremely expensive.
After all, if you look at the fiscal budgets of major economies, public spending on education and research is often much larger than military spending.