The only thing that can really explain this is an elaborate form of price fixing between universities. If one university announced they were slashing "online-on

The only thing that can really explain this is an elaborate form of price fixing between universities. If one university announced they were slashing "online-only" tuition costs, others would probably be forced to follow suit. It would be interesting to see a single reputable university drop tuition prices for "online-only", and offer automatic-transfer admittance to students already accepted into a similarly reputable school (e.g. if you go to Ohio State, you could quickly transfer to Penn State). That might trigger a race to the bottom, and reset tuition rates to what they rightfully should be. The reduced revenue could be made up by cutting the unnecessary ivory-tower jobs, reducing the inflated exec compensation, and reducing the unnecessary $50M+ on-campus construction projects.