I remember wondering aloud at MIT/Harvard putting their courses online for free for anyone to listen to, and saying, well what is the value add then of paying to physically go to college?
I guess we're going to find out whether the networking, friends, social aspect is worth it. There's also something about the competitive aspect of seeing other people in person do better than you or have better ideas than you. Which is hard virtually.
That being said, the college experience has gone through events like wars, plague, disruption, etc, and has come back before. (Although not at a time when there was such a ready alternative technology at hand.) I'm not yet so worried as some say (wholesale change to the higher education model), unless this goes on for 2-3 years.
I guess we're going to find out whether the networking, friends, social aspect is worth it. There's also something about the competitive aspect of seeing other people in person do better than you or have better ideas than you. Which is hard virtually.
That being said, the college experience has gone through events like wars, plague, disruption, etc, and has come back before. (Although not at a time when there was such a ready alternative technology at hand.) I'm not yet so worried as some say (wholesale change to the higher education model), unless this goes on for 2-3 years.