system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is college so expensive, and where exactly does that money go?

BEFORE YOU SAY REPOST: I searched for this, and read a few threads, but I'm really confused how a college can charge thousands of dollars, and have professors who make $60,000+ a year, and there is enough kids in that class to pay for more than just one professor's income for the WHOLE YEAR. And after they put people in debt, where does the money go? What does a college do with all the extra money? Now I know there's general campus upkeep, and that takes a chunk out of the money. The way people put it college takes so much money from all the students, and I just don't understand where all that money goes, or why taking that much money is really necessary.

EDIT: Read all your replies, thanks for helping me understand. Quick side note though, is really no one trying to figure out a better way to pay for college? So many people get in crushing debt because of it, there has to be a better way.
gpt
There are two things going on in your question.  

1.  Why does college cost a lot (for whom?  Compared to what?)
2.  What do colleges to with their revenues?

The second question is the easiest to answer, if only because university budgets are generally public record:

1.  Salaries and Benefits for Faculty, Staff and Administration
2.  Facilities/Maintenance Upkeep
6.  Tuition assistance (revenues used to support low-income students and merit based scholarships)
3.  Subsidies for Athletic Departments (there are, IIRC, only 4-6 schools in the entire country that have athletic departments that turn a net profit - all the others require that money raised by the university be paid into the athletic department for it to run)
4.  Information Technology (Universities demand a lot of computer resources and associated technologies, eg wireless networks, servers, internet connections, wired networks)
4.  Campus Health and Safety (police, fire, environmental controls)
4.  Student Services (Health care on campus, etc)
4.  Utilities (campuses use a lot of electricity, water, sewer, etc)
5.  Marketing (to promote attendance and the university and raise the profile of its graduates)
6.  Legal Services (all universities have lawyers on staff who make healthy salaries)
7.  Debt Service (Universities borrow a lot of money to build buildings, and then have to pay interest on the debt)
8.  Other "business type" expenses (travel for senior administrators, office supplies, etc)

When you say "so expensive" that comparison has to be informed by something.  What are you comparing the cost of college to?

It's unquestionable that the overall cost, inflation adjusted, for college has grown substantially.  Most of these increases can be attributed to the advances of technology and science.  Fifty years ago, the expensive tools used to educate and do research didn't exist - so it wasn't a question of them getting to be more expensive, it was a question of them being available or not.  If supercomputers had existed 50 years ago, you can bet every university would have one in some form - meaning their costs would have been higher.  

What has changed a lot is that the number of people going to college is much, much, *much* larger than it was.  And the amount of public subsidy given for each student is much, much lower.  

So when you say, "the cost of college has gone up" - you have to consider two factors.  The *overall* cost of operating a college has gone up, but the same college today has 40,000 students - where 30 years ago it had 5,000.  

The *cost* of educating those students actually hasn't changed dramatically on a *per student basis* - we are just educating more people than we used to.  What has changed is that governments used to subsidize upwards of 90% of the cost of education.  Today it's less than 30%.  That difference shows up in tuition - making the cost *to the student* much, much higher.