The first wave of "online universities" failed, but that's preobably because instead of trying to copy Education , they should unbundle it first. This is happening now. Things like MOOCs , youtube courses and Lambda school are unbundling the education/learning part. Entities like Ycombinator or tech interviewing is unbundling the competitive admissions/vetting process, Github is unbundling the networking/reinforcement/certification part. There aren't many processes left that are being monopolized by universities. CS shows the way here, and it's nice to see that , for competitive students with a track record to show, a PhD is seen as an accessory, a luxury that they either delay for later or completely forgo.
Maybe democratizing or liberating. Traditionally those things mentioned required more red tape and buying into a system (usually literally) just to get to the fruit.
It's awesome because often it really is just information that while isn't necessarily free to create, once created could be considered to be. And either way, it benefits from more eyes on it/being open source rather than being unavailable to those outside the system.
