American PhD here.

I’ve m only half-joking when I say I’m considering driving a cab somewhere in South America.

Individuals can do that, and they should if they feel like keeping MS.

Organizations are, unfortunately, probably going to remain stagnant and keep paying millions to for things that have free alternatives.

It’s actually really infuriating. When I was in grad school I filed an information request with the college to see how much they paid for access to Office 365 each year. This was in 2021 and they were paying 4 million a year. Meanwhile their grad student employees were all living deeply below the poverty line.

Individual users can make use of free alternatives pretty easily, but I’m not sure they’re actually the target for the price increase here.

Schools, governments, businesses, and other institutions pay wild amounts to MS every year.