Why should online classes be any cheaper? I'm not talking about self-paced, certificate only classes, where you never interact with a real human. You can already find plenty of these for free from any number of top schools. I'm talking about a real class, for real credit, with a real professor and assignments graded by real humans. Online students end up consuming the same resources as regular students (with the exception of occupying space in a physical classroom). What's more, online students require _extra_ accommodations, since they can't just stop by the professor's office for office hours. They have to setup online meetings for that, etc.