I don't agree with Bill, hardly all the issues related to the transition from the current model to something full web-based could be solved in 5 years. I've per

I don't agree with Bill, hardly all the issues related to the transition from the current model to something full web-based could be solved in 5 years. I've personally witnessed from the inside the first experiments with online based univ teaching here in Italy(maybe not too relevant), and the result had the word failure plastered all over it. The initial enthusiasm, the progressive difficulties in keeping the students engaged that could never be addressed(new media-> unexpected problems) and lastly what i think could be considered a failure, students with definitely worst degree and that started dropping out. Quality free material will be increasingly available for sure, but for a typical student is not easy to maintain the consistency needed to study this way. Similarly, universities will have a hard time refactoring their curses to provide something usable/meaningful/useful. What instead is already evident is the success of web-based courses not related to degrees, small packeted courses on a single subject that target young or not so young adults that want to learn a new language or other stuff. As you know there are a lot of interesting start-ups in this area.