I appreciate where you are coming from, as you bring much more real experience into this than me. Here's an open question, and I'm going to pull some numbers o

I appreciate where you are coming from, as you bring much more real experience into this than me. Here's an open question, and I'm going to pull some numbers out of the air to just make a point... Let's say that you have a given math department with 10 faculty charged with education of 4000 students, and your costs are fixed. Which of these scenarios is best? 1) Each of the 10 teachers teaches 4 classes of 50 people per year. Each student gets 2 ((10450)/4000 = 1/2 per year) large courses over 4 years. 2) Each of the 10 teachers supports 1 large online classes of 400 people each, and teaches 3 classes of 33. Each student gets 4 impersonal online classes ((101400)/4000 = 1 per year) and 1 smaller class per year ((10 * 3 * 33)/4000 = 1/4). The #s are made up, but the idea is that with a fixed amount of resources, you can have more small group classes with experts if you're willing to accept very large online classes. Or - you can get a lot more classes for the same cost if you're willing to take them online. Again, this isn't a panacea, and doesn't work for every subject. It also doesn't increase creativity, or encourage research.