yes and no.
University at its core isn't a scam at all. Its a very established and successful mechanism of learning/education...
But there are certainly 'scamm-y' parts to modern universities. These would be:
1, courses that have next to 0% employment prospects in their field.. obviously they have general employability as any graduate does, but I have been to countless music, photography, drama open days, where they have openely lied about their graduate statistics.. they constantly and subtly switch between the employment rate (usually very high, includes even part-time supermarket workers) the graduate-level employement rate (only grad-level jobs, bit lower for most course) and the 'employed in reliviant industries' stat, which is scarily low for many creative courses. There are certainly many creative students who have no idea going in that it would be a great year for the university if 2 of their class of 100 became active creative professionals in the field they were studying.
2, course naming.. Universities have realised that people like specific names, and to feel like its exactly what they want, so they frequently trick people with 'specialised' names. For example my old unversity had three courses: Music, music composition, music performance. It was entirely possible to study the exact same course under all 3 names. None had exclusive modules or taught content that was only for that cause. All that seperated them was that different modules were compulsory.. but all the modules that were compulsory for one course, were optional for the others, so you could have studied 'performance' but chosen an identical course to the 'performance' course. 17 year olds often miss this though.. they think "I want to be a composer.. ooo! here is a composition course, that must be more specially for me then a general course!" without realising that they could be identiical in the end.
3, numbers. Easy one - since the place restrictions were lifted and universities were allowed to take in as many students as they could, they frequently over-subscribe courses, lowering the quality, because each student is more money,and managers have recruitment targets. Its why clearing can sometimes feel more like universities are desperate for students, rather then students are desperate for universities
4, fees. Not all courses cost 9000 or what it is now a year. Some cost far far less per student, some cost more. Its not a scam as such - but some students should understand that they are reciving awful value for their money so that they can subsidise other students in other diciplines.
I may add more later - but its time for my dinner now.