Major flaw in this argument: college = information; information = newspaper; therefore college = newspaper. A better analogy would be college = information + ex

Major flaw in this argument: college = information; information = newspaper; therefore college = newspaper. A better analogy would be college = information + experience; newspaper = information. I don't know about everybody else here, but the major reasons I went to college were: a) my friends were going b) I wanted to meet new people c) I wanted to expand my sphere of knowledge, i.e I wanted to get the hell out of the town I grew up in d) I wanted a job I liked, but didn't know what I wanted to do College provided this, in the form of a lot of other students who didn't know what they wanted to do. Because I didn't take classes online I went to London and Paris, made close friends from other areas of the country. I was exposed to new cultures that my mid-western, white-bread town never had. I learned culture, I made connections that will never be lost, I interacted, face-to-face, with people, everyday. So much of college comes from the unique atmosphere created by academia. While the smear of ink and crinkle of cheap paper may be called an experience, I don't think it's even remotely comparable to a true college experience. And while the web can certainly provide the information more efficiently and inexpensively, it cannot provide the experience. I don't doubt that online classes will continue to grow, but I don't think (and I certainly hope) they will not replace traditional brick and mortar colleges, but instead augment the college experience.