<p>I think the future is bright for boarding schools. You don’t send your child away to school for academics alone. You send them for community as well. Were academics the be-all and end-all of schooling, we wouldn’t have schools. Correspondence schools have existed for a very long time, but no one has ever proposed replacing real schools with correspondence schools.</p>
<p>As to “fewer people able to afford college,” the top 20% are doing quite well: <a href=“Dave Gilson – Page 3 – Mother Jones”>Dave Gilson – Page 3 – Mother Jones. That 20% is likely better-educated than the norm, and unlikely to look for a cheaper way to educate their children.</p>
<p>Experience with online education is not confirming the early pie-in-the-sky predictions. <a href=“http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2013/11/sebastian_thrun_and_udacity_distance_learning_is_unsuccessful_for_most_students.html[/url]”>http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2013/11/sebastian_thrun_and_udacity_distance_learning_is_unsuccessful_for_most_students.html</a> The tech industry has long experience spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt.) As far as I’m concerned, the wave of articles in newspapers and magazines predicting the end of higher education are a species of FUD.</p>