@ucbalumnus, we will be entering a world in which academia is even more winner-take-all than it is now. The economics of higher education does not work as the cost of on-campus education has grown much more rapidly than family incomes. Hence, most school now price-discriminate. They charge a high sticker price but give a discount based upon assessed ability to pay. So the actual price is much lower than the sticker price. But, even the lower actual price has become unsustainable. Harvard and MIT and Amherst and Stanford will be fine, but many lesser schools will need to either augment their on-campus education with remote education. I was just talking with someone from SNHU. Their online classes make all of their money but they are taught with non-scholar instructors. They have a different group of professors with PhDs who teach the on-campus classes. My guess is that schools will have to simultaneously teach hybrid courses ā some students on campus and others remote (with lower tuition). Those that do this can capture significant economies of scale and can stay in business. Those that donāt probably close.
Even there, we have a friend who is an extraordinary teacher. One of the best teachers Iāve ever seen (who also happens to be a world-famous researcher). He is creating an online version of his freshman science course (funded by a foundation) and a textbook. All will be free. It will be better than almost every equivalent class at every school in the world. And it will be free (or nearly so, I would guess). This will cut jobs needed. Professors or TAs can go over the problem sets with them, but you wonāt need a professor at all to lecture. You can be that the compensation for these professors will not be nearly as attractive at major research schools (or for the great pedagogues). So the number of jobs will go down because schools will close and because we can use the lectures of incredibly good teachers instead of the prof who happens to work at your school.
