I agree — it’s not that online-learning has to be intrinsically, objectively of lower quality than traditional college education (indeed, some online-first courses I took for fun now offered on Coursera were better than I remember some of my in-person courses), but to think that college is only courses misses the point: it’s the opportunity to grow not just academically, but, just as important, socially and independently — at most schools, you’re meeting with peers from all over the world (or at least from outside your hometown), have direct interactions with professors renowned in their field who are (in my experience) eager to personally introduce you to opportunities you wouldn’t know about from searching the internet, and access to a vast collection of resources much more restricted to the public. To say college is just getting a degree is to miss out on all of the non-purely academic opportunities colleges offer.

But aside from all of that — it’s also where many (not all) young adults go after high school to figure out who they are, who they want their friends to be, and what they want to do, as for most of them it’s their first taste of living as their own fully independent person. Something has to fill that vacuum.