While it's not perfect, a college degree is usually a decent indicator that a person has at least heard of the stuff you want. A new way to quantify level or pr

While it's not perfect, a college degree is usually a decent indicator that a person has at least heard of the stuff you want. A new way to quantify level or progression of a person would have to replace it. There is no reason why the current Universities can't provide this for online courses. Online courses do not mean that there won't be any Profs and TAs. But you just won't be going to their office on preset hours and sit in a classroom on specific hours. Undergrad education in certain subject really doesn't change from year to year. You could build a course and do small adjustments year to year. What you would provide as a service in my view is the human help. What I hope won't happen is that Universities will turn into for profit course giving institutions. We need the R&D work done at Universities. I'd be suprised if the government would want to continue funding Universities as they do now if for profit website could do it cheaper. Do the current for profit school like the University of Phoenix do any research?