Internet will make (place-based) colleges less important in future - Bill Gates prediction

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has predicted that the traditional system of higher education at colleges and universities will dramatically change over the next five years and soon place-based learning will be less important. In a recent presentation at Technonomy conference in CA Gates said that "College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based". Gates also stated that "Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world and it will be better than any single university." He has also predicted that technology will bring down the sky-rocketing college tuition costs.


These days’ self-motivated learners can learn many new things on the internet on their own. We can see that more and more universities are offering on-line courses. With things like youtube, slide share we can access many great lectures. It is no wonder that Gates has predicted that traditional university system will become obsolete.

Few more quotes from gates at the conference:
“The hardest thing in education is motivation.”
“Math textbooks for every grade are now over 300 pages long, (they are) systematically three times longer than their Asia equivalents.”

“Why not give students a chance to show what parts they know, and learn the parts they don’t?”
“Over 60% of kids in community college go into remedial math. 80% of them pile up debt and don’t graduate. They’re told, ‘you’re a moron,’ and forced to relearn the whole thing. And those books are 400 pages long.”