But it doesn't do that. It merely shows you were able to perform well in a contrived testing environment that has little to do with how you'd actually approach problems in the "real world" (that is, everywhere but a test).

>12-13 weeks is plenty long to learn the material for a course. A student is at a college to learn. It should be their top priority to learn the material during the course.

I think you're missing the author's point here. Yes, a student is at college/university to learn. However, the job of the institution should be to teach, not to weed out students, and that's where the true failure is taking place. And again, nobody is always in full control of their life. Shit happens, as they say, and just two weeks of illness (or really any unforeseen circumstances) can cost you a whole semester. Some students need to juggle studies, work and getting enough sleep while pretty much having no life because of the horrendous costs of attending higher education (which is a whole other problem entirely).

>As for "failure #3", lectures have been used for hundreds of years because they work.

That's an appeal to tradition. They haven't been used because they work, but because there was no viable alternative. But now, we have such an alternative - video lectures and online courses.

>He also seems to miss the fact that for science courses, you need labs. You cannot do chemistry labs online. You won't be able to do field work in biology by watching a video.

That's true indeed. I don't think it's productive to attack universities as a whole, either. They serve a lot more purpose than just holding lectures. You can meet people in the same or adjacent fields as you, you can form connections, work in research (and maybe even stay there after graduation) and many other things. But that doesn't change the point of the article, which is that lectures as a teaching format suck when compared to the alternative.

>You lose the overall atmosphere of a learning environment through online courses, and that is not something I'd want to give up.

You'll have to excuse me for being a bit snarky now, but if by "atmosphere of a learning environment" you mean cramped lecture rooms, long and drawn-out lectures without much (if any) interaction with the lecturer with the overall process often being more of a hassle than anything else for all involved parties, then no, I don't think that's something worth clinging to because we've done it this way for the last thousand years.