This is something the MOOC crowd often overlook. It's based on a misunderstanding of what a university gives you: university entry doesn't grant you access to some members-only club where they hide away the knowledge to keep it from the plebs (ignoring the open access movement, at least). Instead it grants you access to an environment in which you can learn effectively.
The idea that MOOCs will threaten the existence of universities is absurd. It's already possible to get access to the sum of human knowledge without being enrolled at a university. It's always been possible. They're called books.
But this stuff is hard, and attending a high-quality institution gives you a huge advantage in learning the material, compared to being self-taught. MOOCs may grant everyone access to lectures, but just as important is learning with high-quality peers. A MOOC is not the equivalent of being in a class with other smart and well-motivated students.
Again, it's always been possible to learn this stuff independently, but your odds of succeeding are far lower that way. It's great that we have lots of freely available learning material online, but I really don't see that MOOCs are going to turn the world on its head the way some people seem to think.
I'm ignoring accreditation here, of course. If you want to be a surgeon, you obviously do not have the option of teaching yourself, but in terms of learning maths/technology (and assuming knowledge - and not a certificate - is your goal), books have always been there. MOOCs are books++, not universities--. (With apologies to the pedants who might prefer the pre-positional operators.)