Back in 2021, my husband was scammed out of 2 billion won. Long story short, he purchased a large plot of land (South Korea). However, the land was located in a mountainous area designated as unfit for development, except for military or public use. Under the Forest Conservation Act, the area was virtually undevelopable, as it was meant to be preserved. Police believe that the real estate group subdivided the mountainous land into smaller lots and sold them to over 3,000 individuals, deceiving them by claiming to have insider information about upcoming redevelopment in the area.
I know no one is going to take my idea and run with it so there’s not really anything to be gained by shooting it down, lol.
That being said, your issue could be solved with a combination of regulation and divestment.
Regulate that certain subjects have to be taught even if they are loss leaders for the university otherwise the university loses accreditation, and then for the people who want to learn artistic things like pottery and music that might cost the university more to run than they can make on it, create new schools that focus on that rather than keeping them in the university system, but attach valid degrees to them by requiring the mandatory core classes to be taken at the local community college or university of the students choosing.
Maybe you can subsidize them somewhat by making them non-for-profit systems and doing fundraisers for the arts and requiring that universities in their communities include them in their annual donor drives as a separate option.
It’s not a perfect solution, but its the first of many possible ones that I can think of, I’m sure that if we were appointed as the committee to fix the American College system we would make many more and better all-encompassing solutions and solve the problem in a matter of years.