I see a number of comments already in the direction of "if I am a highly-motiviated individual then I ought to be able to ..", with which I completely agree. H

I see a number of comments already in the direction of "if I am a highly-motiviated individual then I ought to be able to ..", with which I completely agree. However, in my experience teaching at a respected but not top-ranked college, the percentage of people right now who are charged self-starters is not high. Unless the nature of students changes then I don't believe that education will undergo a phase shift to online-driven. I'm not knocking the students -- it is a characteristic of any population of people that the percentage who will do a very hard thing on their own is small. It is more likely that mainstream college education will absorb online models, giving credit to the typically advanced students who do well in such courses but still running a large number of traditional classes or perhaps a set of classes that span a range of blended-ness (as most schools are moving toward now). A good change, but not really a revolution.