College is as much about the experience as it is the education. It is a time for many kids to get out on their own and learn to be independent.
It is also one of the last chances for you to be around many people your own age (and one of the last chances you will have to be around many single men/women).
Once you start working, it's different. It's more difficult to meet people and you have an entire set of new responsibilities.
Although I don't think it will completely replace college, it might work well for people already working (and don't have the time to actually sit in class for a few hours a day).
Yes, that's the talking point we'll be hearing from the colleges.
I have news for you. There's no way in hell people are going to value that "experience" to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year when a credible alternative emerges. And you see, that's the real problem. People don't spend money by deciding whether a thing is "good" or "bad". People decide whether something is the best thing they can do with their money. There is no way blowing that much money on an expensive college that produces the same degree as the much cheaper alternative is going to be a popular choice. (Might I add that the online college will also let you go at your own pace, and is even quite likely to have superior courses, once all the tech and experience is in place.) Arguing that college is "good" won't win. You have to establish it as the best choice. There's no way it will meet that bar.
You can berate them all you like for making choices you feel are wrong, but it's hopeless. Live-in colleges are doomed.... long term, anyhow.
Other things will spring up to fill the social void. They won't be the same. There will be a chaotic transition period. They'll be worse in some ways and better in others, and old-fogeys will bemoan the ways in which they are worse without seeing (or comprehending) the better ones. All terribly predictable. All but unstoppable.
We've had an acredited distance learning university in the UK for 20 years - the degrees issued are considered equal to the equivalent course in normal universities (although less prestigious).
The idea was copied/partnered in the US - I think in the early '80s, but it never took off there. I do agree that live-in colleges will likely be overtaken by some form of virtual equivalent, but it's not a 100% done deal that this will happen.
A year ago I'd have agreed with you. I just changed colleges and spent a short gig at Princeton, and now I wouldn't doubt that what we think of as colleges today will remain in some shape.
The college experience is about independence and about sharing independence. It's not about the classes so much as it's about what comes out of those classes - what thoughts, what productions, etc. I just had my first video production class. I'm certain that the various technical lessons are ones that I could get for cheaper, and the various artistic lessons I'll skim over. What I wouldn't get is the feeling of community and collaboration and togetherness, the almost-fantasy of being alive and alone and at the same time together with everybody else. I'd also probably be hard-pressed to get the high-level gear that I get to use.
Granted, I'm in a unique position now because I'm at an art school rather than a generic lib-arts college. My student body is all geared towards certain things more than others. The result is that I'm in a community that feels uniquely welcoming of me, and it's a physical community, meaning that I'm living in the midst of these people, and it's a personal community, meaning I'm making, hopefully, lifetime connections and profoundly changing my life and my worldview. I get to live in the middle of extremely over-the-top people, extremely ambitious people who are ambitious in a way you can't find online. (There are two big tenants of ambition that I identify: One sort you find online right here; the other sort might be impossible to move gracefully online; in any event, it hasn't been done yet.)
I'm in the same position learning-wise that I was last year: All my classes feel beneath me, and in the areas of my expertise I'm quite a ways ahead of most of my peers. So last year I was considering dropping out rather than transferring and paying a shitton of cash - If I'm not learning, I reckoned, surely I could survive for a decade on the same amount of money and learn on my own?
Yes, but I'd lose a few instantly material things. I'd lose access to the career drive that my university provides: I'm expected to leave here with a portfolio good enough to land me anywhere I want to go, and the university will insist on my making it as good as possible. I'll lose the creme-de-la-creme of the professors here: Right now I get tutelage under Emmy Award-winners and studio executives and all sorts of people whose experience is much more useful to me when delivered in person over hours-long conversations. Finally, I'll lose the access that I have now to thousands of talented beautiful people looking for a way to spend an evening. Two days ago on a lark a kid and I finagled our way into an interview with a bestselling author and a movie star. That's quite an experience, and it's one that wouldn't have happened without the particular synergy of the guy I worked with to get the interview (I wouldn't have had the ambition to secure my way in, he wouldn't have known what-all to ask about). When you're with a unique group, there's a pulse that colleges are specifically designed to attract. Not all of them do this, and I don't know which ones do and which don't (I have my doubt about the Ivies, actually), but the ones that do will find themselves prized as always.
Now, what I do think will happen is that live-in colleges will change their path. We're going to see education happen faster and more in-depth at younger and younger ages. I suspect colleges will respond by specializing more and more, which is a good thing - it will create stronger and stronger communities of people. College sizes will shrink, as large schools become more difficult to keep interesting. College may also not be viewed as an essential part of finding employment, which is also good - it will strengthen the value of the experience for the people that choose to go.
I don't see why colleges have to beat every other option. That's like the argument that one form of entertainment will rule supreme over others, that books will be killed by plays will be killed my movies will be killed by video games, with all the other little anal arguments in between. For college to survive, all we need are a few dozen thousand people to decide that the fantastic experience of college is worth quite a lot of money, and I suspect it won't be hard to find them. There are enough people who've had real college experiences (now myself included) that the core ideas that made the experience so good will continue for a long time to come.
The problem with that idea is that it takes more than just people waving money to make something happen; it also has to be economical. There has to be a solution to the "money flow in > money flow out" problem. And due to the enormous fixed costs a college campus implies, if demand drops far enough, you may not be able to make the numbers work for much more than the very, very highest demand people. And that says niche market, which is going to be a big transition away from where we are now.
There's probably some convenient economic term to describe this.
Ultimately, you sort of missed the point of my message, which is that it isn't enough to merely establish that these are good or desirable qualities of a college. You have to establish that there's enough people who think it's the best choice to make it economical. Colleges have to beat every other option from the point of view of enough people that they can turn a profit because colleges are in a free market, and will very soon be facing stiff competition from a new competitor that will undercut their prices by orders of magnitude, while simultaneously providing services that will be in many ways superior, probably superior enough to make up for the ways in which they are inferior.
A few art colleges will survive and a few music colleges will survive, and I tend to agree the Ivy league will survive (but they will bleed), but at the end, nobody is going to look around at the landscape and say that "colleges have survived". It's going to be a bloodbath.
Try to cut out the emotional overtones and just imagine a market where someone comes out with a competitive product that is orders of magnitude cheaper, while being fairly substitutable for the original product. Technically, there are still people who make shoes for horses, and they come out to your house to do it. They aren't gone. But they aren't a significant industrial force, either. That's where colleges are heading; just enough left over that you might be able to come up to me in 2030 and say "Look, Harvard's still there! It's all OK.", but you wouldn't be fooling anyone.
Then there's an opportunity for other entrepreneurs providing a complementary good: Ways to meet and spend time with other "students" in a post-university world.
Just because the lecture hall and the social environment are currently bundled into a single "product" doesn't mean you have to give one up when they become un-bundled.
It is a time for many kids to get out on their own and learn to be independent.
Or alternatively, to experiment with everything from sex and drugs to business models in a curated environment, with partial financial support and liquidity provided by parents and/or the taxpayer. Your point is good, but perhaps live-in college fosters interdependence as much as independence.
one of the last chances you will have to be around many single men/women
Well, there are also cons, but I hear that the single women at these events are under-represented, and a lot of the single men have good reason to be single....
If I'm gonna spend a couple years doing college I might want to move somewhere with other people my age whom I can study with. More concretely, I might move to Portland with all the other unemployed 20-somethings, or Boston, or the Valley. Doesn't mean I have to get accepted to an actual school in those places if I can college on my own time.
It would be nice if this could caused colleges to focus on the experience more - have more face-to-face seminar style courses where people learn to think on their feet, express themselves verbally and dissect the material they've already gone-over on-line.
But it seems more likely that result will be just the death of another dinosaur...
"It is a time for many kids to get out on their own and learn to be independent."
College is completely unnecessary to do that. Going out and living on your own does that just fine! And if it's the time to make connections & socialize & party, then not going to college, living in your own place and doing a ton of social things will achieve that way better than college, for a significantly cheaper price. Hell, it will cause more people to do that, since they would be less likely forced to stay at their parents place in order to afford college.
Also I found it difficult to socialize and make friends in college vs. high school. People are focused on their classes, math & comp sci. people are not the most social types, and unless your in the dorms, it's difficult to make friends.
It is also one of the last chances for you to be around many people your own age (and one of the last chances you will have to be around many single men/women).
Once you start working, it's different. It's more difficult to meet people and you have an entire set of new responsibilities.
Although I don't think it will completely replace college, it might work well for people already working (and don't have the time to actually sit in class for a few hours a day).