I don't think this is fair. I worked at Georgia tech during the mooc "revolution" and helped put on a physics course with a lab, something most thought was really impossible because labs are so hard with a classroom and now we just got rid of it. There were positives and negatives of what we generated, but at the end of the day it worked well enough. I am not exactly for online education nor do I agree it can replace on campus education. The problem is that there are many parts of being on campus that lead to success after you leave campus and also that keep you attending your degree. So it's almost an apples to oranges comparison.

I definitely agree with you on the gap year.