>> My take on the university is simple - the university originally existed because you needed a single physical location for books and smart people. Access to people and information was finite and location really mattered. This is the opposite of the world we live in now - ability to access people and knowledge today is only hurt by the physical colocation aspect. So the university, which is still operating under the "books and smart people are scarce so you need to pay us to be near them" principle just no longer makes sense as the default way to educate the masses.

That doesn't make sense. Maybe for some fields, but certainly all the fields that actually require a lab to work in still benefit from the physical space a university provides.

I'm also not convinced that remote work/meetings == in person collaboration between colleagues.