[teslademigod1]

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.

[pmyteh]

Bluntly, college costs are not going to be dropping, at least this year. Universities still have the buildings, the infrastructure, and the staff that they bought to deliver in-person classes. That those staff are now having to do more work to put together online curriculums, and the admin are having to arrange extra technology for online classes makes it more expensive, not less.

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).

[stepstop]

> 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.

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”

[JadeNB]

> I'm pretty sure in a skeptical sense they'll be trying to pay associate professors less for the same reason.

'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).

[travisoneill1]

Tuition should drop by 50% anyway. The same schools were able to deliver the same services at that price 30 years ago. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has...

[JadeNB]

Tuition costs are ridiculously inflated, and I'd love to see them come down, but "the same thing used to be cheaper" is an argument that doesn't work in any other field. I'd rather see a discussion of the inflation-adjusted rate of increase, or perhaps some other appropriately adjusted metric; tuition numbers would still look terrible, so there's no need to weaken one's argument this way.

[travisoneill1]

That is inflation adjusted. Note "with all figures adjusted to reflect 2017 dollars"

[JadeNB]

Yes, you're quite right. I don't know how I missed that. Thanks!

[malshe]

Did you mean to say adjunct professors?

[teslademigod1]

yeah, sorry, adjunct not associate.