[nfnaaron]

One of the roles of a good teacher is to be able to look at the face and body language of a student and think "he's not getting it, I'll try another approach."

Another is to draw a student out, or egg someone on, like a conductor.

There's also the subtle communication and enthusiasm that races around a small group of engaged people, that I doubt we'll ever be able to replicate online.

Giant 101 classes taught in auditoriums by RAs are probably good for online teaching, but I would generally feel that you better be cutting me a break on my tuition if I never see my professors' eyeballs.

"Oh, you went to the U of Whatever? When? What major? Hey, I think I was your professor! What'd you think of that blackboard app? Yeah, pretty shitty. So hey, did you pass my class?"

Not saying we shouldn't, just that we'll lose something valuable if we go all in.

[adamc]

I don't think there is much question that one-on-one tutoring is superior to small classes which are superior to large classes. I agree that, initially, large classes will be the target. But in the longer term, it comes down to economics. Universities keep getting more expensive -- their costs rises faster than inflation. Much of the cost of a university is the salaries of faculty and staff. The only real way to keep the cost down is to teach students in a different, more efficient way. So I wouldn't be surprised if most students end up being taught in ways that don't allow for things like assessing body language. I agree that it's better, but it's expensive.

[robotrout]

Yes, Universities DO keep getting more expensive. This is troubling in it's own right, and needs to be looked at.

You don't get to say it's inflation, because it's rising faster than inflation.

You don't get to say, "we need more money because we need to hire more faculty and staff to serve all our extra students", because those extra students bring more money with them in the form of their tuition.

You can try to say, "we have more students, so we need to build more infrastructure", but I won't let you, because that's why bonds were invented, and they've been used for centuries for this purpose.

These universities are charging more because they can charge more. It's a bubble, and it's going to collapse like a bubble, which is a shame.

[PebblesRox]

I'm afraid your bubble metaphor is too subtle for me. Educations aren't tradeable investments like houses and shares, so the value of an education does not depend on its potential selling price. Can you explain more about how you think the education bubble will collapse? What do you think will happen to tuition prices in the future? Will universities go out of business? Will the collapse benefit students, or will it harm them? How?

[robotrout]

I don't know. I can predict doom, without knowing how it will come about. Nassim Taleb gets away with it, so why not me?

I can only say that these price rises seem artificial, by the reasoning I already mentioned. Artificially high prices == bubble, since artificially high (or low) prices are not sustainable.

I fear the collapse will hurt students. If it collapses like a bubble, than it will bring chaos, which can't be good for anybody, students or universities. As to how exactly, I can only guess. Perhaps everybody tries to do the online thing, which, as others have noted, can never be as good as having a flesh and blood professor. Perhaps it just finally rises to the point that people just can't afford it, and the colleges go bust due to lack of students. Perhaps there's a cultural shift away from the notion that college is the most important thing a person can save 20 years of savings for. I don't know, I just see prices that don't reflect reality and fear the worst.

[adamc]

When you are mostly based on labor and you aren't seeing significant productivity increases, you will tend to be hyperinflationary because your workers all want to do a little better than inflation. Add to that vastly increased regulation on universities over the last 30 years, and it's pretty easy to explain the current trend. It's not like they are making big profits -- look at the balance sheets of the public universities some time.

They can pay less (and in some cases are), but it is hard to attract strong academic talent that way. Getting a PhD takes a long time, and in the sciences there are likely to be a bunch more years working as a postdoc for not much. I'm not sure how much more blood they can squeeze out of that stone.

So, I agree that something needs to change, but I think it will require innovation to raise teaching productivity.