[csydas]

As much as it is a broken system, in this case likely no. The actual subscriptions are cost prohibitive pretty much just to individuals and to organizations outside western Academia. The distinction of "western" is only relevant in that from what I recall working with Librarians at my last University job, the publishers do business differently with the US and parts of EU than they do elsewhere in the world.

Rising tuition costs are an issue, but in relation to an academic budget, journal subscriptions will still account for a very small percent of the overall budget, even for relatively small University.

The Publisher/University subscription loop, however, is indeed real and has been covered here before I believe. The short of it is that quite a few publishers are basically held together by taxpayer money in the form of continued library subscriptions. The need for a middleman in these cases is pretty questionable, as the publishers basically just host the content at this point and do no curation or peer review themselves.