by A. Michael Noll

About the author: A. Michael Noll is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and a senior affiliated research fellow at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information.

Some experts are predicting the death of the university. They claim that the Internet will make universities obsolete as students around the globe study and take courses, all on the Internet. The ‘webtization’ of university education will mean the end of physical universities. All education will be virtual, they say. Still other experts predict that corporations will prepare, package and sell education on such a wide scale over the Internet that conventional universities will no longer be able to compete or survive. The corporatization of education will occur on such a wide scale...