If I had to predict how the fallout of this pilot will go, here’s my timeline:

Pilot succeeds, expands to more universities and classes Part-time faculty get laid off, more community colleges are shuttered, extracurricular college services are closed, and humanities and arts departments are dissolved for lack of enrollment (science enrollment increases–yay!?) Graduate programs dry up, once master’s and PhD students realize there are no teaching jobs. Fewer graduate students means fewer teaching assistants and, therefore, fewer classes Competency-based measures begin to find the online students perform on par with, if not better than, campus-based students. Major accredited state college systems offer fully online university degrees, then shutter more and more college campuses A few Ivy League universities begin to control most of the online content, as universities all over the world converge toward the classes that produce the highest success rates In the near future, learning on a college campus returns to its elite roots, where a much smaller percentage of students are personally mentored by research and expert faculty

Is there any chance for success?

Jared's prediction includes: "Pilot succeeds, expands... science enrollment increases... online students perform on par with, if not better than, campus-based students...universities all over the world converge toward the classes that produce the highest success rates."

That is success!

The nastiest part may come in battles over a massive federal bailout for all the giant old campuses that can't adjust.

"... the truth is that our education system, primarily designed to test rote memorization is built to scale and be independent of teacher interaction. A review of research by the Department of Education in 2009 found that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”...."

IS this "the truth" of higher ed?  The "review of research" is a slim CNN op ed.

Gordon, good point. Plus science enrollments increasing is also success.

Geege, I don't know if that's the truth of higher Ed, but I do believe there's an overemphasis on rote memorization, fwiw.

There is also the large problem of the general American population entering college with subpar math and writing skills.

I wonder if texting and Facebook are hurting or helping writing skills.

I tried doing a remote and online course curriculum for my MS. It was a disaster and a serious disadvantage.   I ended up commuting in traffic to be able to actually be in the classes.  

I'm reminded of something one of my phd advisors told me when he was trying to hold up my degree progress.  He had taken 8 years to finish his degree, and he thought I was progressing through the degree program too quickly at 1/4th the time.  He said that doing the requirements wasn't as important as spending time exploring and doing research so you grew academically.   I thought he was full of s***t. 

I think the online curriculum can optimize and make efficient 10%-20% of potential degree getters. They mention the lower end courses which not only can be automated but are often used as a gatekeeper for filtering out the serious from the non-serious.  I think it'll have an impact, but at the edges, not the core.

BTW, Twitter may help focus thoughts by its artificial limit, but the grammar...ugh.  Facebook is stream of consciousness creative writing, but unfortunately an insight that there is no there, there. Pinterest/9gag/instagram/etc show that pictures are worth 1000's of words.  More writing = better skills, so my assessment is that at some level writing things for public review and feedback is a net help.

That's an excellent point about writing. Net net there's no substitute for writing things for public review and feedback.

It makes sense to me that I cannot learn as well online as I could in person.

Not sure if there's anything more than anecdotal evidence to support that.