Kiss Traditional College Goodbye, It’s Never Coming Back

Good news! The bleeding heart Bolshie fascists that brought us the virus hysteria crackdowns may have just dealt a mortal blow to their own training centers

“Do you think teenagers will be willing to mortgage their futures in order to watch college lecture videos on the internet?”

Here’s some great news: one of America’s most broken industries is finally being exposed as a sham. And make no mistake, the end of college as we know it is a great thing.

It’s great for families, who’ll save money and take on less debt putting kids through school. It’s great for kids, who’ll no longer be lured into the socialist indoctrination centers that many American campuses have become. And as I’ll show you, it’s great for investors, who stand to make a killing on the companies that’ll disrupt college for good.

But Stephen, how can you be against education?! I love learning, but I hate what college has become. As recently as 1980, you could get a four-year bachelor’s degree at a public school for less than $10,000. These days, it’ll cost you $40,000 at a minimum, $140,000 for a private school, or well over $250,000 for a top school.

College costs have ballooned beyond all reason. They’ve risen even faster than healthcare costs, which is really saying something. Kids are burying themselves in debt—$1.6 trillion at last count—in order to attend college.

When I wrote about this last year, I had little hope things would change anytime soon. Why? It’s a tough sell to convince an 18-year-old kid not to attend the four-year party all his friends are going to, especially when the US government is financing it through student loans.

Mark my words: coronavirus will be remembered for transforming college forever. The virus has forced practically every college to move their courses online for the next semester. So instead of living on campus and walking to lectures, kids will be sitting in their bedrooms watching professors on Zoom calls.

This is FAR more disruptive than most folks realize. College is about much more than just the learning. There’s the education, and then you have the experience. The learning part has barely changed in a century. Kids still sit in 60-year-old lecture halls listening to professors.

But now, the “experience” has been stripped away. Do you think teenagers will be willing to mortgage their futures in order to watch college lecture videos on the internet?

This Is the End of College as We Know It

Right now, millions of kids are questioning what they’re paying tens of thousands of dollars for. NOBODY is willing to pay $30,000/year to watch lecturers on Zoom calls. In fact, tuitions are already falling.

New data shows colleges reopening “online only” this Fall have slashed costs by $9,000, on average. How many kids will jump at the chance to save themselves tens of thousands of dollars in tuition with online learning? My prediction: millions.

In fact, by slashing tuitions for online courses, schools have permanently changed the perception of what college is worth.

Here’s My Prediction for How the Disruption of College Will Play Out

Millions of American kids will soon be able to complete degrees­—fully online—for way less than the cost of traditional college. But they won’t just be enrolling in Ohio State or University of Florida’s “online classes.”

With learning shifting onto the internet, there’s nothing stopping nimble disruptors from offering real college degrees at much cheaper prices.

2U (TWOU) runs online classes for 73 of the world’s best colleges including Yale, Cambridge, Georgetown, and NYU. It’s only a matter of time before online disruptors like 2U or Coursera start offering their own degree courses.

For example, they could hire world-class professors to create online courses for, say, $200,000/year. Each professor might teach 250 students per school year, which works out to roughly $800 per student. Tack on the cost of running the online course, plus a profit for the college, and you could probably charge each student $3,000/year.

These courses would carry the same qualification as any regular college. Yet, tuitions could be slashed by 70–80%. Right now, every US state has a couple of big schools and dozens of little ones. And they’re essentially all teaching the same material in a slightly different way.

I Expect Online Disruptors Will Put Many of the 4,000 “Middle-of-the-Road” US Colleges Out of Business

Top schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford will always attract elite kids and command huge tuitions. They are disruption proof. But the thousands of schools that sell “standard issue” degrees for tens of thousands of dollars are in for a rude awakening.

Think of them as the new department stores. You know how unspecialized, middle of the road retailers like Macy’s M and Sears are dying off? Nimble online schools will do to traditional colleges what Amazon AMZN did to department stores.

This is a change every American kid should be cheering for.

Source: Forbes

31 Comments
  1. Steve Struthers says

    I live in Canada, where university and college education is heavily subsidized by the federal and provincial governments. When I finished my degree studies in 1987, my total student loan debt was just $5700 (in Canadian dollars), or about $18,000 in today’s dollars, or less than the price of a new car. This was because the government gave me many grants to study and I didn’t need to borrow much money.

    While tuition fees have gone up quite a bit since then, it’s still possible to get a quality university education for about $35,000, not including living expenses and get government-guaranteed student loans and grants. Community colleges cost even less, and a few of them are offering degree programs in fields like nursing.

    The institutions of higher learning in Canada are government-controlled, so you don’t see the kind of naked profiteering that happens in US colleges and universities. It’s precisely because of government intervention that Canada is one of the world’s best-educated countries.

    The only thing keeping university-age kids out of the schools right now, is the pandemic. When the pandemic ends, they’ll be back on the campuses in full force.

    When I see what kids in the US are paying for higher education and contrast that with what Canadians pay, I can only shake my head at how badly Americans are getting hosed on higher education. It’s a travesty.

  2. NWOD says

    This misses the big picture.

    The lockdowns are about moving toward a more virtual world before total immersion with AI-brain interfaces like Musk is working on.

    Agenda 21 requires a move to virtual reality as you can save tremendous costs that way. Why have a university classroom and library when you can do everything at home? Why a work office? Why commute? Why have a big house when your life is online?

    A full Matrix-like insertion into virtual reality is the ultimate in “energy savings” and “sustainability”.

  3. Dave says

    It is still around $5,000 tuition for 4 years at Florida State Universities which are some of the best in the country. (plus food and rent)

    Tuition – 4 years at 6,300 a year = 25,000

    Pell grant – 4 years at $5,000 a year = 20,000

    25,000 – 20,000 = 5,000

    You can have as many cool video courses as you want. If the school is not accredited, it means ZERO

  4. Carlos Muro blacker says

    When i went to College, i had to go to Remedial School a couple of times, once for Math, and another time for English, and not once in Remedial School i attend class with a live teacher, no, all classes were taped and were stored in hard drive diskettes, so, i pick up the tape n* such and such for fractions or integers in math or the diskette n* such and such for english and i learn just fine, i could stop the tape or the diskette at any moment, repeat some part, and go on, a wonderful tool of learning.

  5. douglas gray says

    If you look at how colleges operate, they are mini socialist fiefdoms. As Hayek pointed out, it is the road to serfdom, with the students as the serfs.

  6. commonsenseadvocate says

    A four year degree never needed to be a four year degree. Once out of high school you shouldn’t need to take stupid electives that have nothing to do with your field of study. It’s just all a money making scheme and I can’t wait for it to all collapse.

  7. L Garou says

    Silk purses for everyone!

  8. Common Sense says

    .,CANADA has the BEST technical college and university system in the world! This is why so many American students are coming to Canada to get their certificates and degrees! Good price, too!

  9. COMMENT REMOVED says

    Trump University is waiting in the wings to make a HUGE comeback.

  10. John Sutherland says

    I see parallels to the 2008 housing crisis. Back then, a lot of people who should have never gotten a mortgage in the first place got one anyway, thanks to lenders playing loose and fast with the rules. Then came the defaults.

    Same thing has been happening with college loan programs. Kids with an eighth grade reading level get a scholarship or qualify for a loan, and either drop out or end up with a degree in “liberal arts”. A big waste of time and money, as well as depriving those resources from someone who really needs them and would actually learn something that would benefit themselves and society.

  11. cechas vodobenikov says

    US universities produce sheep—the peculiar specialized nature of US/anglo schools/universities, produce passive servants of corporate capitalism—in civilized nations higher education is subsidized by the state…not in the anglosphere—-the professors “technicians that serve power with a thin understanding of everything” do not educate, they socialize

  12. ke4ram says

    “Mark my words: coronavirus will be remembered for transforming college forever. The virus has forced practically every college to move their courses online for the next semester”

    The virus hasn’t done crapola. It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians,It’s the politicians.

    JHC,,, Why can’t these authors just say it! “It’s the politicians!”,,,,, simple.

    The damn virus is less lethal than the flu if you remove all the numbers scam.

    1. Ivan_K says

      Yes. And from that, it follows that the traditional colleges are going just because the politicians & TPTB mean to replace them with something else, which can hardly be expected to be an oasis of enlightenment.

      Overall: Things of this kind never just happen. It’s about what who does what to whom.

  13. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

    “Kiss Traditional College Goodbye, It’s Never Coming Back.”
    We won’t miss it’s remedial entry programs.

  14. stevek9 says

    In ~ 1987, I asked a friend of mine, who was a Professor of Chemistry at Boston College why it didn’t make a lot of sense to just videotape (1987 remember) one of the best lecturers in the World for General Chemistry and have students watch that instead of going to a lecture. Lectures for these general classes typically had ~ 500 students, so there was no ‘interaction’ anyway. Maybe 2 of those students might ask a question. Higher level specialized courses you might still argue were worth having ‘live’. He told me that they all knew that was true, but they hoped nobody would figure it out. Looks like it has taken 50 years.

    Costs will be much lower than estimated in the article. One good lecturer in G. Chem could ‘teach’ a million students, and that course would not need to change. The leading edge of Science does advance, but General Chemistry has been the same for a half-century (I know, I taught it ~ 2005 … same as I learned in 1972). Same for Mathematics, General Calculus has not changed in 50 years either … ‘Calculus and Analytic Geometry’ by Thomas would still be an excellent text today. I’m not as sure about the other curricula, but I doubt Classical Literature (if it is still taught) changes much.

    Young people still need a way to socialize, like all of us, but that will have to happen in special interest clubs, amateur sport leagues, etc.

    Colleges can become places where education at the highest levels occurs, e.g. Quantum Mechanics, or Non-linear Wave Theory, or …. from my own areas. And, research will still be done at Universities, but this will be a much smaller ‘mission’.

    And if you think Harvard will be untouched by this, I think you are mistaken. Connections will be made through families, for the elite. As it was in 1890.

    1. chris chuba says

      Even with large classes, the best teachers that I remember always interacted with the class, not to answer questions but to force students to engage.

      I fondly remember the dreaded pause where the hawk, in my day it would be a middle to older Jewish lady, would survey the room looking to make eye contact with her next victim. She would then ask the question that she already knew the answer to, to see if you were paying attention. It also helped with the pacing. I can still hear, ‘whenever you have an equality sign, whatever you do to one side of the equation you must do other side’.

      I am not dismissing what you are saying. Just saying that it does hurt a style of teaching but wouldn’t matter in most cases. I only encountered a handful of good teachers.

  15. chris chuba says

    Asking a professor to grade 125 papers per semester for $100,000 a yr (50/50 split) even with TA’s seems like asking a lot unless they are addicted to teaching. Maybe $6,000 a year is more reasonable.

    I can see them boosting revenue by allowing eavesdroppers to supplement revenue. These would be people auditing the class for an even smaller fee but who get no course credit. The advantage is that they do not burden the professor with papers to grade (or their face) so you can have have much larger class sizes. I’d consider taking a class or two like this. It would be like a super training program.

    1. stevek9 says

      No. Grading, especially for low-level courses can be done by computer and is done that way already. This can be made much more sophisticated. Natural language ability is becoming more and more common. Machines already correct for grammar, spelling and even usage. Siri can figure out what you are asking her, etc.

      Hey, maybe even teaching decent handwriting will come back. So, the machine can figure out what you have written. It won’t need to be all that good, these algorithms can be quite sophisticated.

      A lot of teaching is going to happen by AI.

      1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

        Cursive is as antiquated as Morse Code, unless you want to call it calligraphy and give a degree in it.

        1. Joe Dixon says

          You’re probably saying that because you’re no good at it.

          1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

            I don’t have a use for it.

      2. cechas vodobenikov says

        makes sense for amerikan automatons…..impoverished thinking speaking an impoverished conservative language

      3. chris chuba says

        You are Satan 🙂
        For auditing or even attending class, I not even certain that Zoom is the best forum. I prefer video playback where you can pause or modify the speed of the video. I can count on one hand the number of times I learned something by hearing the Prof answer a question vs a student showing off.

        But then again the best teachers I had were the ones that asked ‘rhetorical questions’ where they randomly chose a student and forced them to answer a question. So yeah, probably would hurt a teaching style.

    2. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      Grading papers is teaching in the same way that testing for COVID treats it.

  16. Jihadi Colin says

    So according to Anti Empire, colleges that cheat students by taking huge amounts in tuition fees by way of educational loans are “socialist”?

    This site is a bad joke now.

    1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      Colleges perform a valuable service by taking huge tuitions in return for poor outcomes.

    2. stevek9 says

      You’re right, this is much more like crony Capitalism.

      1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

        All modern commerce is “like crony Capitalism” if you can’t recognize that it is a complex amalgam of communism and fascism.

  17. michael houston says

    but what about the football…..we gotta have the football….no football no pay ….no pay no play….

    1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      The NFL needs to start a football college where the only coursework is in playing the game well enough to get a diploma and a contract with a team.

    2. stevek9 says

      Amateur leagues or farm teams, which is what the colleges have become anyway. All the NFL teams establish 2 farm teams, A, and B. Done.

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