Well there's the problem right there. Academia shouldn't be an "industry", it should be a public good. "101 level courses that are packed with over 100 students, listening to an uninspired lecturer talk at a crowd of disinterested faces on their phone and being FORCED to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on it." is an artefact of forcing a public good shaped peg into a capitalism shaped hole.

When academia is an industry, students and professors get treated like commodities that have to demonstrate an ROI to be allowed to exist. Humanities don't have a good ROI in our society, therefore they are not funded, therefore positions in humanities are scarce. The end result is overworked lecturers and large class sizes.

The alternative is to cut humanities altogether, which honestly is happening; we're headed to a situation where humanities programs in some areas will just cease to exist, and they'll concentrate in places that actually care about education. It's sad but that's where we are.