Universities are afraid that by charging students $20,000 per year in tuition for an online degree, people will begin to question its value and possibly turn to other alternatives (perhaps, maybe also enrol in universities abroad that have low or no fees). Thereby pulling the curtains on the whole tuition fee charade, which is that the lion's share is used to find non-academic related expenses (I'm guessing: administration, outreach, marketing, a nice website) [1]
Universities that rely heavily on large sums of money from student fees are now faced with 2 choices: 1) Charge close to the same amount of tuition fees for an "online" university experience 2) Re-open and continue with business as usual, hoping the risks of Covid-19 transmission can be mitigated
Option 2 apparently seems like the more attractive version to maintain the status quo, which leads to attempts at convincing people that restarting face-to-face teaching is a reasonable way to go forward.
If this is what is going on, then this is yet another issue with universities that rely too heavily on income from tuition fees to survive.
The primary functions of (public) universities is to educate the population and conduct research. The ability to perform those functions must be prioritised and subsidised via public funds to guard against the influence of financial stability creeping into the decision making process on how to conduct activities for these primary functions.
I have studied in both the UK (9,000GBP/Year) and Germany (<€500 per year) and noticed a massive difference in the way both were run and my life as a student in each.
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/22/less-than-...