Perhaps the high price of college education allows higher professorial salaries than the market would support

So creating an artificial demand for a position that the market would not support otherwise is a good idea? Did we learn nothing from 2008?

Perhaps the system in the U.S. would benefit from more government subsidization.

Seriously? Where does this end? It's already gotten to the point that most people can't afford higher education without a loan. You think driving those costs up even higher could be a good thing?

I've got the right to ask whether the alternative you suggest is any better.

I agree. However, I can't tell you how many times I've seen this argument turns into "it's never been successfully implemented anywhere else so it can't work here". We can have the discussion and hypothesize about an alternative system without blindly throwing out the debate for lack of implementation.

Whether "reducing demand" would result in poorer education, or worse facilities, or whatever.

Reducing demand and returning demand to natural market levels are two different things.

Instead, I get snark. Ayn Rand would have done better,

Yes, Ayn Rand never resorted to snark or talking down to people with inferior opinions.

Clearly no one's advocating the dismantlement of the whole system to blindly follow a new system that no one has studied or done "case studies" on.

Also, the only "homework" the original poster did was copy and paste an article written in 2010 at the Mises Institute's website. It took a long time to figure that out.

Edit: And downvotes for contributing to a debate? For shame circularfish, for shame.