Sorry, but that's just not how it works. Even the process of getting a transcript and processing it is more time-consuming than you might ever imagine. The recruiting office has to spend a boatload of time on getting and processing transcripts that just doesn't happen at other places.
The recruiting office and position coaches get reams of data on potential recruits, be it from high school coaches pushing their own players, high school coaches recommending players in the area, paid scouting services, the recruiting offices scanning local papers for top-performers, etc. At a place like Iowa (or any other program that can get in guys based on the NCAA minimums), they can safely move ahead in their evaluation without going through a rigorous academic check.
Before we even start recruiting a guy at NU, we have to take those names, send out transcript requests, get the transcripts back (which is often not an easy task), then evaluate them for viability with NU's admissions. As you point out, resources are finite and this is a TREMENDOUS expenditure of resources that could otherwise be used in actually recruiting players.
From there, our pool of potential offers has been reduced into two general categories: (I) top-flight recruits that pass our academic hurdles, but are being recruited by the "traditional powers" and (ii) lesser recruits who pass our academic hurdles, but might not be as strong on the football field. If/when a player passes that academic hurdle, we can move forward into our full evaluation (area coach getting a character evaluation, position coach evaluating his tape, coordinators evaluating the tape if there's a question on an offer, then Fitz signing off on the offer).
Add it all up and there is a whole lot more expenditure of finite resources that isn't necessary at other places.