In the linked article, only one student even references cost at all -- and that's a student who is attending Wharton and states pretty clearly that the reason for her deferral is remote learning, as it cuts into the networking benefit of attending such a program.
Otherwise, I'm not sure I'm seeing any evidence that it's cost that's caused this. Costs were just as high a year ago -- why the sudden decline in enrollments? It seems like there are more obvious explanations.
I suppose it's possible that this is the year we reached the tipping point cost-wise. But it seems much more likely that our poor handling of the pandemic and changes to immigration policy were bigger factors. Remember that a couple of months ago the Trump admin announced they wouldn't let foreign students on visas stay in the US if their university happened to be remote. While that was overturned, that sort of instability certainly isn't an attractive feature.
I wasn't saying that cost was the specific cost. Rather, as costs rise, if value delivered doesn't keep pace, eventually you run into problems. Yes, Covid, and our poor response to it, is the direct cause. But, if US Universities were a superb value, people would be more willing to overcome the problems of Covid.
A good question is, once Covid is out of the picture, will things return to "normal"? Will foreign student numbers return to what they were? I would suggest that they will not. I believe that Covid did not change the world, but what it did do was accelerate changes already underway. People didn't just start shopping online, but now they do a lot more. People didn't just start working from home, but now they do a lot more. Post Covid, things will move back a bit towards the old way, but not all the way back. There will be far more online shopping in 2021 than 2019, and far more people working from home in 2021 than 2019. Similarly, I expect more foreign students in 2021 than this year, but less than 2019.