Actually, the cuts that Trump has imposed on the granting agencies could easily be absorbed by cutting the administrative bureaucracies both at the granting agencies and the awarding institutions.
Like health care and academics, costs have risen not because the practitioners are getting super rich, but because of the exponential growth of the nonpracticing bureaucratic imperative. Just look up "managerialism" on Wikipedia and the sources cited.
It's a cancer.
“It’s a cancer.”
Yes, it is, and having put one child through a major private university at a total cost of around $200k, I think it’s long past time when we completely revamped our post-secondary education “system.” “Professors,” are just like the SCOTUS, in that they are over-paid and do very little work.