I'd imagine the tuition should drop by about 30-50%, seeing as college costs are going to be dropping. I'm pretty sure in a skeptical sense they'll be trying to pay associate professors less for the same reason.
and charging students more.
and charging students more.
A college set up as a distance-learning establishment is in a different place - and there are some of those. But the costs of running a university don't suddenly vanish just because the students do. And as everyone expects/hopes in-person teaching to be back next year, I don't see many institutions deciding to go online-only as a business model, either.
(FWIW the associate professors will be fine: they're mostly tenured. It's the adjuncts which are going to be shafted, together with the people who were hoping to get tenure-track positions in what is now a decimated job market).
From what I’ve seen, this has already been happening over the past decade already. I agree they’ll continue doing it for “new reasons”
'Associate' is a tenured rank. Now, to be honest, universities should cut the pay of their highest-paid members first—and we've been getting the highly performative "admin taking nominal pay cuts" measures as sops to that—but I'd imagine it's far more likely that non-tenured assistant professors will see those pay cuts first (or perhaps, as maishe points out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23918339 , you meant adjuncts, who get the weakest protections of any faculty).