Laptop U: Has the future of college moved online?

I wished they'd picked a better title for this.

I think it makes an extremely important point though: Online-only just doesn't work in some contexts, and the centralisation and commodification (via revenue models for MOOCs) of research knowledge will drastically hurt the ecosystem of learning and research. Academia, or rather the learning and social environment within, is something quite specialised in many cutting-edge areas that falls out of the domain solvable by market forces. The real problem education innovation should solve is how to create a fluid HE sector that can deliver cost-efficient, quality mass vocational teaching, while not artificially stratifying and dividing incomes purely based on institution. The élite-v-community-college cleavage can't be closed from the top, or purely by new methods of education. There's too much money involved.

What I love about the New Yorker's writing here (and in general) is that it manages so well to explore the problem in a multi-faceted, subtle light, while still retaining clarity and a clear narrative thread, that wraps up just as neatly as a TED talk. Except you have learned much more than just a bite-sized piece of knowledge.