Would you take a machine learning course from an unknown, likely outdated professor when you could listen to Andrew Ng for free?
What the internet has brought is a 'winner takes all' for education.
Compare this to when I tried to take an AI class online offered by stanford, and I had to drop it because it was impossible to grok.
The difference? One professor actually taught, and the other simply wrote inscrutable symbols on the board and expected you to interpret it yourself. When we informed the professor on our lack of requisite statistics background, the unknown one simply adjusted his lessons to introduce the necessary concepts, while the Massive online course simply required a thorough background in probability to watch even the first few lectures.
Independent learning can kind of scale, in half-hearted ways, but actual TEACHING does not scale. Real teaching requires one on one effort.
I went to a low tier university because I had zero chance of getting actual access to an MIT professor, and the local ones were good enough to teach me everything I needed to have a real chance in the field.
The schools don't create value for students because they are bad at teaching. Having all the materials online is not learning, and its not good education.
But, the fact that students can create a better learning environment themselves than can a faculty member who knows the content and works at a university teaching the conten should be shocking.