How will they combat cheating? I mean if it's all done remotely then what is stopping somebody completing the degree for somebody else?
Additionally there's plenty of cheating going on in traditional universities. I've even heard of people being paid to take entire classes for other people.
However, I would like to point out that an university does not merely comprise of lectures. The research projects, internships and even the interaction with peers cannot be recreated online. Traditional universities still have an edge over this.
What I would like to see eventually happen is for learning and credentialing to separate.
I'd like to see a university that was more freeform. What if instead of just offering 4 year degrees, you could take a 6 month AI program, or a 3 month probability and stats course.
In practice, the result of cheating for a degree is the same as lying on a job application or resume. When the person gets hired for a job in that field their performance will make that job short-lived (if they're genuinely bad). Similar for putting a school and degree they didn't go to on their resume just to get hired. If they really don't know the material, their performance will show and worst-case the company lost six months of time they could have spent taking someone else through the hiring process. (Ed: okay, worst case is that the person's incompetence causes them to blow up the Earth on the first task they're given.)
If they do know the material, and their job performance is good, do you really care that they cheated for the degree or lied about having gotten it? (Okay, it pegs their honesty level quite a bit and you should definitely start bolting things to the floor, but if they do the work well they're still a valuable bee and you can keep them on while looking for someone else if it's morally offensive enough to you.)