Will online classes make professors extinct?

Does anyone have numbers indicating the extent to which tuition subsidizes research funding or vice versa? I (and most HNers, I&#x27;d assume) wouldn&#x27;t shed many tears over seeing the extraordinarily exploitative and inefficient institution of college education go through disruption. My experience has been that online lectures, course material, and forum discussions are more than up to the task of replacing their physical counterparts (pause+rewind is a killer feature, and the discussions in online forums are miles above anything I experienced in section&#x2F;recitation). Hands-on labs are about the only thing that ought to have a marginal cost in this day and age. But I hate to think what disruption could do to academia.<p>There are a handful of big (sometimes existential!) problems lurking on the horizon which absolutely rely on academia because incremental progress isn&#x27;t amenable to monetization. I&#x27;m most worried about the drug industry. It&#x27;s imploding (google &quot;inverse moore&#x27;s law&quot;), leaving the basic science required to get over the slump in the hands of academics, and I don&#x27;t want to wait 50 years for high-efficiency gene therapy (or let China grab the market) just because the research is tied to an outdated educational system. I know there&#x27;s very little anyone can do about it, but I need to know the extent to which college tuition subsidizes said research before I can form a solid opinion on disruption.<p>EDIT: Got off my ass and googled it. The NSF estimated in 1994 that 9.5% of research funding comes from tuition [1]. I would like to formally submit one internet-vote in favor of disruption, along with one internet vote to increase research funding to compensate :)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib97313.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nsf.gov&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;issuebrf&#x2F;sib97313.htm</a>

Betteridge&#x27;s Law of Headlines says NO.<p>Katy Jordan did a study of MOOCs recently [0], and it was found that the completion rates are in fact quite abysmal. I suspect that the reason for this is because there isn&#x27;t much incentive to continue studying.<p>So this is very much in line with the guy saying at the end of the article: Here&#x27;s a library, now go get knowledge.<p>Learning, IMO doesn&#x27;t happen like this. MOOCs will just perform the functions of a library, albeit far more efficiently. The function of a classroom (not necessarily a professor) is still quite necessary for structured learning. And of course, with a classroom comes TAs and professors... which makes the answer to the question, No<p>[0]<a href="http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.katyjordan.com&#x2F;MOOCproject.html</a>

Online courses are cute. The stanford machine learning course is a watered down travesty that doesn&#x27;t compare to Andrew&#x27;s original material out there. There is a reason for that too. The harder the courses get, the more it is nice to have an actual person to talk to about this shit. My real analysis class made sense only because I was able to talk to the professor after class and understand why I should care about open balls or closed balls.<p>Similarly from a systems perspective, my OS class was the hardest C.S. class that I took. There was very little that I remember from the lectures but the most I took away was during designing shit and getting stuck and then going back and talking to the professor and brainstorming. This is stuff that inherently doesn&#x27;t scale well to millions of people.

I&#x27;ve taken a couple Coursera and other self-led courses and it&#x27;s not a good fit for me. I recognize my deficiency at self-directed learning, and I imagine many <i>many</i> people share it. I just can&#x27;t learn that way.<p>A good chunk of people will require social, interactive, and hands-on learning led by people to whom they can listen and converse. Until that experience is sufficiently reproduced online (and surely even after that), &quot;professors&quot; will not be out of a job.<p>Also the title is hyperbole.

&quot;Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. Even the greatest ideas of science are nothing more than working hypotheses, useful for purposes of special research but completely inapplicable to the conduct of our lives or the interpretation of the world. If, therefore, a man seeks education because he feels estranged and bewildered, because his life seems to him empty and meaningless, he cannot get what he is seeking by studying any of the natural sciences, i.e. by acquiring &quot;know-how.&quot; That study has its own value which I am not inclined to belittle; it tells him a great deal about how things work in nature or in engineering: but it tells him nothing about the meaning of life and can in no way cure his estrangement and secret despair.&quot; - E.F. Schumacher (from his essay The Greatest Resource - Education)<p>This quote is part a defense of the humanities and liberal arts as essential for presenting ideas of who, what, and why we are.<p>Schumacher makes a strong distinction between education and training and I lean towards categorizing MOOCs as the latter. While they may achieve wider credentialed status, they will not and should not replace traditional educational institutions. Pricing, degree structure, and allocation of resources (professor pay vs. recreational amenities) might all need to be looked at but the mentor-pupil dynamic is essential to the liberal arts.

I&#x27;ve taken several coursera courses and maybe the good ones are hiding in there somewhere but I&#x27;m really unimpressed by the ones I&#x27;ve seen.

Schools aren&#x27;t just going to disappear. It&#x27;s natural for technology to take over a sizable chunk of the teaching process, handling inefficiencies as technology has always done best. It&#x27;s probable that most of the world&#x27;s population won&#x27;t need to interact with professors, but a select few will always have the privilege of face to face learning. I believe there are too many niche studies for professors to be entirely replaceable. Not to mention the indirect benefits of attending a school campus.

Will high quality textbooks and the printing press make the medieval university go extinct?

No more than ebooks have wiped out printing.