I believe that we are talking about pre-cons here. It costs WotC the same money to print a deck full of good cards as it does a deck full of bad cards. They do have to be a little careful about including cards in a deck for one format that are highly sought after in a different format (
True-Name Nemesis). They have to be priced at a point low enough where players of the format who already have the format staple still want to buy the deck. The Commander precons have an MSRP of $34.99. I think that is on the high end, but about right.
For a precon for Pauper, I do think that the Professor's suggested price point of $24.99 is a bit high. I think it should be under $20. I think $9.99 would be about right. because we know that they are not going to load precon Pauper decks with all the high end commons.
Here is the price scale I would like to see for the (hypothetical) precons we're discussing:
Pauper: $9.99 (or less)
Planeswalker Deck or similar precon that needs significant upgrading: $19.99 or less
Modern/Standard precon deck that needs little to no upgrading: $24.99-29.99
Commander precon - $34.99 or less