I suspect that the only aspect of undergraduate education that requires the reputation, commercialism, or exclusivity of "traditional" universities is testing. Scoring well on an electrical engineering test administered by MIT might be just as good as taking the course there.

While I can understand that for basic stuff, there is no way I would ever attend an online course on some advanced undergraduate topics in physics or mathematics online.

There is a benefit of being in a classroom environment when learning an advanced subject. You have a direct connection to the professor and other students, which is essential for advanced material. Plus you can easily go and talk to them afterwards for more details. I learnt a lot by going to professors office hours which doesn't work online.

Also, what about labs? Every science program I am aware of has a laboratory component. That cannot be done at home. Plus good luck trying to get universities to agree on what labs to do. Each university has different types of researchers who focus on certain areas, which is reflected in the labs selected. My former university, for example, had no particle physics people so any lab related to particle physics would be misplaced. Instead they had a lot of quantum people so the labs were more geared towards that. I know of another university that had a lot of particle physics people and their labs reflected this.

Another thought is research. How would undergraduates get exposed to research in your system?

Thinking about it more, having TA'd first year calculus, you need to be able to interact in real time with students. I think online resources are great and I recommended them to my students, but they cannot replace face to face interaction. This is something online technologies cannot replicate, so I say it is a bad idea to even do it for basic things like calculus, which is very fundamental to the sciences.

Personally, I think it is a noble goal, but unlikely. Instead, I think the universities should integrate online stuff in addition to in classroom lectures.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the university environment. Being surrounded by my peers in the same field really helped. I learnt a lot just by hanging around the various clubs. That absolutely cannot be replicated online.

It would be hard to do online courses for subjects that require a lot of physical tools for teaching, or loads of physical activity. Some examples are physics, mechanical engineering, computer hardware design, dancing etc.

But it might be useful promote online education more since it increases accessibility and affordability.

> You have a direct connection to the professor and other students, which is essential for advanced material.

You can ask the student to write down their questions and mail the professor. This way, a good professor can be shared by many more students.

>How would undergraduates get exposed to research in your system?

The professors can guide them to where interesting conversation happens on the Internet, and they can get exposed to interesting research there.

>I forgot to mention the university environment. Being surrounded by my peers in the same field really helped.

There is no law that this atmosphere of dense population of smart people should be limited to universities.

By the way, I am agreeing to your central point, which is that online education should be a complement and not a substitute to conventional education.

I doubt that I would have survived an online education, though I can't say for sure.

I know someone who got most of an undergrad degree online, in a substantive field, by necessity -- she was a teenage mom working a job and caring for an infant in a rural town. Her mom told me the hardest things about online college for her daughter were the loneliness and crushing boredom. It's great that she had that opportunity. I'm glad she's tougher and more focused then I'll ever be.

The atmosphere at a small college is where I was able to keep up with my coursework. It got me out of my hometown. I got over my crippling shyness, and learned to interact with people in a civilized way. Graded assignments "forced" me to do the work.

In my view one thing we still don't know about online education is how many people can actually get through it. We also still don't genearlly know what an "educated person" will consist of, who sat in their parents basement for 4 years staring at a computer screen.

Are you implying that online courses are less 'educational'? I ask because you placed educated person in quotes.

Not at all. I was just identifying "educated person" as a term in potential need of a definition. Thanks!

Thanks for clearing that up. As I was reading your comment it seemed like you were of the opinon that online education is of less value than face to face. My mistake :)

Let's ignore all of the arguments around Khan Academy (pretend it's a foregone, rational conclusion that it is superior) and focus on people:

Humans are irrational by default (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDAzsZLvfPw). This is more or less proven in many behavioral experiments (Too lazy right now to source them) when people will do the obviously wrong thing based on internal logics.

Because of this, we can look to the irrational beliefs of people that influence the schools. Namely, social and physical proof. And the social proof has a major benefit: it's less likely that someone is bullshiting credentials if they have an actual degree to back it. http://xkcd.com/451/

Still, it will be a while before irrational opinions catch up (or are leapfrogged by locations like Ghana that embrace the new medium) and that there are ways to catch cheaters.

What exactly are these "irrational beliefs"? Please enumerate them.

>no one is buying the bullshit

Here is some writing feedback for you: this style of discourse isn't wanted here.

The vast majority of STEM undergraduate courses fit very well into the format and are very arguably better suited to computer delivery.

>no one is buying the [premise]

is a fine word substitution. but the problem with your observation (assuming it is correct), is that nobody is paying money for commodity education. people are lining up to pay money (in the hope that) a "peer reviewed" credential will set them apart.

Not all educations are equal. Not all university educations are equal. And (the quality of an) education isn't strictly a function of one's character.