Absolutely agree, the physical presence is extremely important. So much of what I learned was from having inspiring peers, professors and TAs in undergrad. Wit

Absolutely agree, the physical presence is extremely important. So much of what I learned was from having inspiring peers, professors and TAs in undergrad. With that said though, imagine if the baseline for every class in every university was "great classes with awesome course material". Now the differentiating factor becomes what you talked about - the quality of the TAs, the professors and their research, your classmates. Wouldn't that be an improvement? I'm thinking of it as us automating away the non-creative part of school - i.e. as you noted, the valuable stuff is the interactions and the peers, so why not maximize the focus on creating opportunities for that?