dude, just stop. you drug in average cost of UT. that link shows their cost of attendance. and it broke it down beyond tuition. And I know how endowments work.
Fact is, with an investment, should come a judgement of ROI.
I agree everyone has to do their own ROI - that doesn't mean reality isnt reality. Most peoples kids are not going to get into UT and those that do could often get enough money from TCU to make the difference negligible - but you have to understand how TCU works for that to happen.
But if you think cost of attendance figures are the same as cost of education for a university - then you don't understand endowments and how they work.
The UT Board estimated last year that the average cost of delivering an education to a UT undergrad was over $70k per year per student including room and board for on campus housed students.
Because they determined that the total cost of attendance tuition and room/board, etc) for that same student is around $20k, that means the UT endowment earnings are covering $50k/yr per student on average to reduce the $70k to $20k to keep it simple. Thus the earnings they have decided to distribute from the UT endowment cover about 72% of operating costs for on campus undergrads. Not surprising since UT has one of the top 5 endowments in the country thanks to the state of Texas Land Trust giving them the majority of their proceeds.
I don't remember off the top of my head what percentage of our operating budget is covered by our endowment - but it is more like 20%, not 70%. Therefore if our cost per student to deliver an undergrad education was the same $70k, then we would have to have a cost of attendance of $57k for that same student.
Which is pretty close to reality today for both schools.
Therefore if we can get our endowment up - the entire point of Lead On campaign - to where we can fund even 50-60% of the cost of delivering an education to a student, then our total cost of attendance would be a lot closer to UT - about say $28k/year per student in today's dollars.
Some public schools have an actual lower cost of delivering an education - for lots of reasons discussed before like higher student/faculty ratios, more GA's, non-PHD's, etc - but most public schools have a lower tuition because they are subsidized by the state through taxes or some other budgetary means at the state operating budget level - not because they actually spend less money per student.