Bill Gates: Internet To Make Universities Obsolete

Not obsolete. Although you have the study materials you will not gain on hand experience which is what counts.

Amen, but this will mean that someone needs to find a reason to compel these students to study on the Internet, otherwise if there are no grades to shoot for, how will they know how they're doing?

I agree with Gates. I'm getting my Masters online because my job entails me to travel around the country all the time. At night I watch lectures just like I was in the classroom. I take notes, etc etc. I VPN in to take exams and such. I was actually watching lectures on the beach last weekend. People think doing this online is easy but it's not. Sometimes I'm able to watch live lectures and ask questions but most of the time they are recorded. It's going to take about 6 months longer to get my Masters but with a cost savings of over 50% I'll take it. Some non brick and mortar "schools" I don't put too much faith in. I read that Phoenix Online University has a grad rate of 14%.

In most high caliber colleges, there is no hands on experience. I have met quite a few people who have 4 years degrees in computer tech and even those with A+ certs. But beyond their book knowledge, they couldn't fix a PC for their life.

Some community colleges have hands on but are hard to work around.

But I don't think Gates is wrong. Technology is not evil and can provide our education system with a well needed boost. Its sad that my fiance from a poor Eastern European country had taken college level math, science and history during her high school years and we get parents complaining that their kids have to take a basic test to pass high school (in AZ anyways, and by basic I mean basic and easy as crap).

Apple will optimize the learning system with its new iGrad portable education system... good job Bill.. your paving the way again for Apple..

i kid..i kidd...

I hope they throw away those crazy&^%$ text books. It's the biggest scam in the world $185 for a MATH BOOK? They should be free to download.

its been like that for a while now, you can find anything on the internet, its just a matter of knowing where to look......

But where will the worlds twenty-somethings go to get drunk, have threesomes, and free themselves from the tyranny of their parents?

K-12 teachers should all be paid for performance. When I was in HS jeez 20 years ago now my teachers could've cared less if we passed or failed. One teacher passed a student just so she didn't have to deal with him again next semester. Public education in this country is a joke. Charter schools are better HOWEVER they need to be monitored more closely. A charter school in my area was stripped of it's charter because teachers were giving students the answers on national standardized tests. The more students they passed the better it looked over Public Schools.

This coming from a man who dropped-out of college. Just remember that. Yes, he's worth billions, but how many college dropouts you personally know are worth billions? Zero? That's what I thought.

Not to say online lectures won't expand the knowledge base of these people, but the ability to apply that knowledge is gained through repetition with homework, projects, labs, work, etc.. I don't think that even the most entertaining and insightful lecture from the most charismatic professor could teach you enough of what you need to know about a particular topic.

Online lectures also lack interaction. Ask a question on YouTube, and you'll get back a million "Cause you're a fag" responses before you get one back from the lecturer. That was my wifes complaint about a legitimate online course from a real accredited school that she paid for: no interaction. You get a pre-recorded lecture, and a list of problems to complete, and that's it. Its not really learning, but then again, I suppose it depends on the school you went to. Even a brick-and-mortar school might not be any better I suppose.

The (British) campus experience is something I'm glad I got to experience. It'll suck if it all goes.

And, where will the researchers go? It's a very important aspect of Uni.

Which is part of the reason why the US went from a #1 College Graduation Rate for young people a decade ago to #12...last.

Add a webcam to tuition (if you don't have one), a microphone, and set up a massive Skype like platform (Cisco) and you have yourself an online university. I am dying to sign up for online courses myself, unfortunately for many thousands of us who are veterans, it's not the University that's the problem but the slow VA that refuses to acknowledge e-learning classes as apart of the GI Bill. Also classes cost a little more to take as it is which actually works its way out when you factor in gas expenses, but currently I am forced to drive 15 miles every day to and from college alone when every class I've taken thus far could have been done online without the need for listening to a professor (especially when some don't give a crap about really teaching you).

The next generation of kids won't have to tackle these problems, lucky spoiled shits .

I don't like Microsoft, but Bill Gates lately is really doing and saying great stuff.

Who cares? It's usually on mommy and daddies dime anyways.


Your last bit is true. In all reality it comes down to the professor. I've had the infamous "powerpoint professor" who...well just read off powerpoints and said "complete these chapters problems" and that was the class. I've had online professors reply frequently to students responses and put constructive comments within submitted papers.

Online university degree....yes, but for "FREE" hhmmmm......???? Definitely not from Microsoft.

Some of the biggest and most intimidating books I've seen are books you buy in book stores as manuals for Excel, Word, and modern programming languages. Maybe Bill should work on improving that.

And yes I wonder if his view of college is based on his much different experience from the rest of us. The internet is great, books are great, but sometimes a person standing there in front of a chalkboard can do in a few minutes what you cannot do in hours trying to do it yourself with books and the internet.

Not correct across the board. Coming from one of the top chemical engineering schools in the US, there were PLENTY of hands-on courses, particularly the dreaded Unit Ops. The experience for other engineers and science majors was similar. Other engineers I have met during my career from different schools have all had a fairly decent amount of hands-on training from their schools, it was usually the poorer engineering schools that had less hands-on, not the high-end ones in my experience.

While I have no doubt there will be a lot of good lectures available on the internet, the problem will be filtering through them. Any idiot with a webcam and a degree from a 'degree mill' will seem credible to the unwashed masses. The "University of Google" comment from Jenny McCarthy concerning vaccines and her followers being a readily available example. Stephen Colbert's term of "Wikiality" and the elephant article edit also comes to mind. I see a great danger resulting from the "I saw it on the internet, therefore, it must be true" syndrome.

Well, you still can't get an accredited engineering degree online. Try taking a electronics lab online.. :-)

Gates may be able to give away billions of dollars and still remain a billionaire, but others are not so fortunate. The "best lectures in the world" are likely to be copyrighted intellectual material belonging to either the lecturer or the school. To promote the free access of them on the net is no different from promoting any other type of piracy whether it it movies, games, or books.

I would love to see the day where any US Citizen could log onto free online courses for a wide variety of core classes, such as English Composition, and College Algebra II. You know, instead of getting charged $400-1700 for that same class, taught by a grad student.

Bill's absolutely correct, US colleges are nothing more than expensive babysitting anymore. Getting in requires little other than the basic knowledge you'll need to keep up and a fat wallet to pay for the tuition, plus the hidden fees like books that end up managing to be more costly than tuition. Online colleges can remove many of those hidden fees and leave the process up to one of pure learning. There won't be any college experimenting or campus life to distract students. The problem is that all a diploma adds up to when searching for employment is how much prestige the school has in the eyes of your employer. Online colleges without a brick and mortar school backing them up do not have a lot of credit yet. It's also a poor replacement for technical trades where hands on experience is critical. That problem could be solved with a hybrid method however, hosting workshops at small campus locations, but still leaving the lectures and research libraries to online content. Large campuses are fun and a part of the "college experience", but they're no longer necessary for learning.

he stole this idea from Dan Brown aka pogobat.

Don't rely on professors, folks. If you want to know something, nothing stops you from pursuing the autodidact method except your self-motivation. Forget staring at screens, and studying some professor through an eye-glass! That professor you listen to may certainly have mastered his/her discipline, but beyond that he is a common dilettante. Expertise is for the narrow-minded - with the Internet, we should all have the ability to become rich and diverse polymaths of human knowledge. Expertise is merely a piss in the ocean in comparison to a life lived broadly, in examination of all that attends your interest. We're taught to believe that the "jack of all trades master of none" is a terrible dictum, and perhaps it has its flaws, but I am not arguing such an old point. I am arguing that you need to develop your mind beyond the discipline you choose for yourself. No professors will help you to do that - you must be true to yourself.

And on the question of books...its called a second-hand book store, or better yet, an online second-hand bookstore such as BetterWorldBooks.

The reason programming books are that large is because they are soo detailed. I am in my 4th year of web programming and my programming books
are like my bible. If they try and make the books smaller and less intimidating then i feel you could lose out on some important detail and i am a firm believer
that detail is the key to everything. I am not saying that bigger books are better, i am saying that if the books have to be that big it is
becasue the subject matter has a lot to it.
In my view, i feel that Bill Gates has addressed a good point. Online collage courses would be a great idea. I am lucky enough to get funded
to study away from home, as the course i am studying i cant study near my parentals house. Online courses could fix this, if you have the drive
and the ambition to learn a subject then doing it online would work. This does not mean that we should do away with actual collages and universitys.
Because sometimes its easier to learn when you are talking to someone else rather than reading it from a book.

i feel bill gates is generaly right. the cost of books at university can be easily be replaced with online low coat downloads. mainline universities lack the flexability for a student that has to work. They deserve to be challenged. At the moment there are not many good credible online universities they will come. they will not challange the mainline universities immediately. even in this new commputer world it will take more than ten years to change ths dominance of mainline universities.

Being taught in a lecture hall with a real live professor is something I cant see an online course replacing. I recently finished an online correspondence class, and compared to my regular fall/winter classes on campus, I feel I didn't get nearly the same incite into the particular subject.

Taking a thermodynamics class and not being able to ask the professor a question about what he/she is doing at that point during the lecture would be incredibly difficult.

An engineering degree online would be next to impossible. The amount of group and hands on work that you have durring your 4 year degree would be very difficult to receive through your computer screen.

Not only that, but there should be end to end educational paths all mapped out for you.

What good are the best lectures if you are missing the foundation to understand why.

eg: Want to learn quantum physics? Here is the path from beginning to end. Jump in at the point where you have a foundation of knowledge.

i wonder what hood "billion dollar" Bill reps?

hilarious, simply hilarious. West Sieeeed

Also, who wants to be bet in 5 years all texts will be in e-reader format?

You'll carry around an e-reader, not 100 lbs in books.