How College Teaching Can Have a Future

I'm not convinced that's a win-win, with the exception of large lectures. These are essentially glorified video presentations with little to no possibility of student interaction during class hours, and I firmly believe that they can be replaced by video lecturing with a TA present for easy questions.

The value of a college class isn't the content itself, as 95-100% of the material can be found in the textbook for that course. If you were sufficiently motivated, you could use the textbook and the class syllabus to gain all of the relevant information.

The real value for a lot of students is in interactions with professors. You can ask questions and get topics explained a different way. You can discuss specific topics and get guided towards additional helpful resources. You can learn from the questions that other students ask as well.

Point being that streamed lectures with royalties is only a win-win if we accept that classic lectures are one of the more effective teaching styles. As Zoom-style classes indicated, many professors were unwilling or unable to adapt their classes to fit the remote environment. Many of the classes held over the pandemic resulted in students getting much lower grades, which is an (albeit weak) indicator that recorded lectures aren't better than their in-person counterparts.

This also ignores the possibility of a more effective class structure. Some of the best classes I ever took had little to no traditional lecturing. Class discussions, designing presentations, writing unique paper styles, etc. are often more effective pedagogical strategies.

Granted, this requires professors to focus more on teaching which may be a non-starter.