Professors are not the reason why college is so expensive. Professors work for a living, in case you didn’t know. Colleges spend a lot of money on insurance because their liability is enormous. Kids come who insist on the freedom to do what they want (parents often insist on the same thing) yet sue at the first sign that Johnny might get hurt because he exercised his freedom. Johnny might get drunk and injured or worse in an accident off campus, but the college gets sued anyway. The colleges usually lose those cases.
Dorms when I went to college supplied simple, but ample rooms. Now, they require expensive technological safety systems and people to monitor who comes in and out. The rooms themselves are a lot fancier. If they are not, kids go to schools where they can find them. It’s called competition.
The accreditation organizations are now requiring significant outcomes in all courses. Parents don’t realize that after secondary school parents fought off that evil, the trend merely moved to the colleges so that it could work under the radar of most students and parents. Part of the requirement means forced hiring of staff to oversee that this is happening. They will lose their accreditation if they refuse. There’s all kinds of middle management that is now required for numerous reasons. Technology itself is expensive to maintain. And this just skims the surface of reason why colleges are expensive.
Perhaps some do; many don't. Many professors teach courses that should not exist at all, in departments that likewise should not be. Other professors teach lies, intentionally, in order to promote "social change." In other industries, the consumer is the ultimate judge of what constitutes useful work. In colleges, the consumers (students, parents, and the taxpaying public) have no say whatsoever in what type of "product" is produced.
Dorms when I went to college supplied simple, but ample rooms. Now, they require expensive technological safety systems and people to monitor who comes in and out. The rooms themselves are a lot fancier. If they are not, kids go to schools where they can find them.
No student selects a school on the basis of the on-campus housing, period. Hardly any student voluntarily remains in on-campus housing past the required freshman or perhaps sophomore year. Campus housing is a terrible deal, always vastly more expensive than living off campus, considering what you get - and off campus there are no thought police telling you what words you are allowed to say, and when.
Your argument about liability, while it has some merit in that lawsuit abuse has driven up the cost of everything, is likewise a red herring. In point of fact, the largest part of the budget of any college is salaries. And it's not the robber-baron TA's taking the school to the cleaners, either. It's the overpaid and overabundant administrators - and the professors, many of whom are likewise overpaid, considering their so-called "skills" and the actual value of those "skills."