My thoughts on why a real university will always make sense, but for different reasons http://blog.siliconverse.com/2011/12/29/why-you-need-to-go-t...
I think in a couple of years we will discover that the key benefit to online education is the ability to consistently deliver high quality instructional content to very large numbers of students.
The social component of learning should benefit from this. My hope is that online delivery of instruction will free up time in the classroom for the human dynamic of discussion, problem-solving and shared inquiry.