Author is making biased observations, probably based on his experience. Parental pressure, peer pressure, shame are all wrong reasons for going to college to get a degree. The lectures I watched on Khan Academy, Coursera or EdX beat almost all lectures I attended at college. For me there isn't a "big difference between watching a video online and actually being there". Many times I learned more from watching Youtube videos than attending lectures at universities/colleges. Hands-on learning courses on codecademy or codeschool are much better than in-person corporate trainings I attended, that companies I worked with spent thousands of dollars on.