In the big (300+) lecture halls, watching a video or listening to a lecture is no different for all the interaction that takes place.

I think real learning occurred in labs, reports or in real world application of knowledge. The lecture is an outmoded means of transferring information; however one on one learning or learning in a mentorship situation is far better. I suppose the argument is that you really can’t educate all that many people with such focussed attention. My counter argument is that you are only deluding yourself if you believe that you are truly educating anybody any other way. This is not an argument for disbanding universities, but rather teaching in different, more personal way.

Learning should be a matter of making decisions and choices to truly demonstrate that a person has a fundamental grasp of the material, rather than the regurgitation of fact. The lecture model of University teaching stresses regurgitation, rather than understanding. To illustrate further – I think it would be far better of spend a large amount of time to figure out how a theorem was derived rather than memorize a large amount of theorems or equations. When I took physics, I was astounded to learn that the masters had tried (and come close) to determining the size of the earth with trigonometry. I knew the same equations that they did, but because I lacked a fundamental understanding of the equations, I could not fathom how these guys went about calculating the size of the earth. I did “well” in physics, but did I really understand the material ?

You mention some key benefits for normal universities, but I’m not sure they are going to matter than much to someone hiring. Classroom-based education is necessary for a certain type of student and for certain subjects. I think the majority of people would get an equal amount of learning from an online class as they would a classroom-based one as long as there are real teachers available to email questions or talk over the phone to. Extracurricular learning is good, but I don’t see why things around your community couldn’t substitute for it.

Meeting different kinds of people is a definite plus in my mind. I loved my (abbreviated) college experience. I don’t think it really translates much to helping in the real world though. While your meeting different kinds of people, they are mostly in your age group and are going to have similar interests. When you get a job, your going to be meeting different kids of people across all different ages who will be significantly different. Also, we’re in the internet age where kids are often communicating with people all over the country or world before college. Establishing independence is a big one, and one of the major reasons I think parents will continue to send kids to college even if online alternatives become accepted. There are plenty of much cheaper ways of accomplishing this though.