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Comment by stblack | Hacker News Reader

Schools still have a very large proportion of their fixed costs to cover. Schools and their lecturers need to invest in perfecting onlive delivery.

Therefore it's not particularly realistic to expect schools to chop their top-line so soon.

This is clearly a transitory and uncertain period. With time, possibly less time than schools hope, they will be forced to adjust prices downward.

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You adjust for that by increasing number of enrolled students. Not by pretending you are delivering the same product.

Many universities’ core product is exclusivity and hard-to-get-into status signaling. Increasing enrollment disrupts that value.

It's more than just signaling -- the primary value of limited admission is providing greater networking opportunities and directing social and academic culture. Although, this is mostly lost by going online to begin with.

For profit institutions do not get sympathy for their fixed costs.

Most large for-profit schools are primarily online, and have long been. Huge in-person campuses are primarily public universities.

You might be confusing private nonprofit universities with for-profit schools.

One still cannot charge more than the customer is willing to pay. Of course, if the customer is willing to pay that much then it wasn’t too high to begin with.

Most are already charging more than the customer is willing to pay, thanks to scholarships/grants/subsidies/etc.

Don't a lot of the bigger schools have billions of dollars in endowments that can easily cover fixed costs with their returns?

Yes, but they're already using that money.

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