One thing, however, is that I don’t have an optimistic view of what happens when capitalism meets the requirement for a top-quality education. In a profit-based environment the incentives are to admit and graduate as many students as possible. To keep them happy and in the system, they will usually get the grades that they expect and believe that they deserve.

I probably needn’t mention that we’re not so far from this situation already, with many departments (including mine) receiving compensation from the institution proportional to the number of student credit hours.

By outsourcing the non-specialist / non-contraversial topics, universities can focus on – and distinguish themselves in – the hard, creative and interesting areas that benefit from experienced tuition and, in doing so, perhaps make higher education more affordable.

Funnily enough, I learnt just fine in a large lecture room or even theatre, though there were also tutorials to help. But it really depends on the lecturers, the quality of which ranges from engaging and genuinely enthusiastic about teaching to abysmal. I can’t imagine having anywhere near the same engagement online compared to even a large lecture theatre.

By astounding coincidence I took one of Alan’s classes, USyd CS3 Database Management Systems, about 20 years ago. Hi Alan! (He was one of the more interesting lecturers )

A separate issue, based on my experience at three R1 universities, is that a large fraction of students don’t “want to attend an R1″ in any informed sense. Certainly I didn’t.