I think PG phrased the university point poorly. He says he wants to get rid of universities? Really what he wants to get rid of is the undergraduate education s

I think PG phrased the university point poorly. He says he wants to get rid of universities? Really what he wants to get rid of is the undergraduate education system. Universities are primarily places where cutting edge research is done, with students being a secondary concern (they just bring in the money). There are some decent counter-arguments: The draw of universities, certainly top ones, is that you physically bring together hundreds, thousands, of people who are eager to learn. This is something you will never get with a MOOC in the same way. You might have a community ten times larger doing 6.00x online, but you don't have that mingling of smart people in different fields. Good ideas (rarely) come out of lectures, they come out of meeting friends for beer or coffee. That's a very rose tinted view of reality, but some universities like Oxbridge, MIT, Stanford, etc really excel at putting great people in the same room as each other. Aside from education, universities are by far (in my experience) the best places to meet like-minded people who are a similar age to you. We had societies for everything under the sun. Many people go to university/college solely for the social aspect.