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With the Internet, there is no reason for the modern university as we know it, PARTICULARLY in undergraduate work. If I had a few shekels to rub together, I'd hire the best lecturers in the world, record their lectures, and make multi-millionaires out of them. Rent lab space in local tilt-up industrial parks, hire a batch of post docs from wherever to grade and supervise the work, and presto! A university without the cost of housing, buildings, or worthless professors producing nothing of value.

I really can't understand why it hasn't already happened.

I’d hire the best lecturers in the world, record their lectures,

There are akready lots of courses online - free - to anyone who want to do the work. But of course they cannot get credit. MIT, Harvard, open course, etc.

The underlying problem or relevancy is tenure-—lots of depts carry deadwood - tenured profs who do nothing but pleasure themselves over the “post modern ramifications of Joyce Carol Oates” or the “lesbian repercussions of Jane Austen.”

Don’t get me wrong - enjoy both authors but do not feel that 100K of public moneys should be paid to cacademics who teach and write about them ad nauseum.

I can tell you precisely why it hasn't happened, because I was a part of such a "university," yorktownuniversity.com

The problem, pure and simple, is accreditation. For a "degree" to be worth anything, it has to be accepted in the work community; and that means accreditation; and that means that the ESTABLISHED system has to approve the new competitor.

I worked for ten years with YU trying to get a BA program accredited. I quit, and it was another five before they finally got a degree in government approved. I can't tell you how much BS was involved in class revisions, "behavioral objectives," writing this plan and that plan . . . ALL WITHOUT A DIME OF INCOME. At some point, profs like me give up. It's not worth the possible future payout.

So, no you wouldn't just "rent lab space" and make multimillionaires out of professors. The accreditation community will not permit it. And if you just put it out there, you won't have any takers because the knowledge without the sheepskin is useless to most would-be employees.