The one big thing that I don’t like about a lot of the so-called online learning is that for the most part it is nothing more than a money machine bilking the government out of millions of dollars which was reported on in a recent documentary on PBS . However Bill Gates is one of the people who thinks that done right technology could go a long way to reducing the ever increasing cost of going to college and university.
At the recent Technonomy conference held in San Francisco Bill Gates suggested that technology could reduce that cost of a post-secondary school education down to $2,000
“College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based,” he said.
Moving more learning activities online can bring down the soaring cost of a college degree.
“Only technology can bring [college tuition] down, not just to $20,000, but to $2,000,” he said, citing price tags as high as $50,000 for a year of college.
Gates predicted that technology could soon make place-based learning five times less important for college and university students.
Source: Hillicon Valley
As nice as that sounds we are a very, very long way from that vision as you can see when you watch College Inc from PBS.
