Your right, it's only about $30k per year. And an employee isn't the same as a shareholder, unless that employee controls a non-profit, runs it to make substantial profits and skims those profits by paying themselves and their cronies massive salaries. Go look up the salaries of your state school President, Administrators, Athletic Director, Football and Basketball Coaches, and Professors.
I dunno about elsewhere, but in-state tuition in Texas is no more than $10k (varies by school, but none are above that). Still too high, but it's not yet at private-school levels of absurdity.
Look at total cost of attendance. Schools could set tuition to zero, but require students to pay $40,000 a year for "room, board and books" and it wouldn't actually make tuition cheap.
Tuition + fees (possibly + books, but that is highly variable from term to term and generally substantially less than tuition) is the correct way to evaluate the cost of higher education. Room & board is generally optional at state schools (there are a few exceptions).
My institution's in-state tuition + fees are about $9K/year. The TX state university I taught at for two years was similar.
