The End of the University as We Know It?

"In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students."  

So begins a very provocative essay by Nathan Harden on the possible impact of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which may soon bring very dramatic changes to the way higher education works. You can read the whole essay in The American Interest.