This strikes me as hopelessly naive on a number of fronts. Good professors spend years refining their lectures and they change things year to year, but many of

This strikes me as hopelessly naive on a number of fronts. Good professors spend years refining their lectures and they change things year to year, but many of those changes are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Reducing all education to a simple transaction where money is traded for knowledge is overly simplistic and invites poor conculusions. Even if it were that simple, there is an inherent and significant asymmetry of information that stands in the way of an efficient market. Further, for some professors, at least, money isn't the only reward they get from teaching. They may like interacting with students, they may feel their own understanding of the subject is improved by teaching it to others, and the dynamic of the classroom provides valuable insight that helps them improve how they teach the next batch of students. The professor may feel, and have evidence to back it up, that students who don't come to lectures, on average, learn the material less well than those who do. There could be a lot of reasons for this, but at least some of them likely relate to the classroom experience, the enthusiasm of the professor, his or her ability to read the room and dwell a little longer on a point that half the students may be baffled by. Their lectures could have a lot of deliberate redundancy about key concepts that isn't captured in notes. You can argue that the student should be free to choose whether or not to avail themselves of these advantages, but your comment and so many other comments in threads like these, suggest that many students don't even realize what they might be missing. I'm utterly convinced that our education system, from kindergarden through graduate school and beyond is ripe for significant changes, but I'm mindful of what can be lost in major disruptions, particularly if people are ignorant of the value of the things they are sweeping aside.