Could Higher Education Be Free?

At the Nantucket Project, billionaire Peter Thiel and author Vivek Wadhwa put forth the idea that in the near future online courses will allow people to get a higher education completely for free with just an internet connection. Student debt is currently at $1 trillion dollars and one third of all college students end up dropping out, those numbers are from the Council for Economic Education. Wadhwa says:

There will still be a cost associated with getting a formal degree. But most universities, he says, “will be in the accreditation business.” They will monitor and sanction coursework; teachers will become mentors and guides, not deliver lectures and administer tests.

Vivek is banking that the vast majority of people will begin to realize they can become educated simply through the free information offered online. A Reddit user just posted a video showing how he finished MIT’s four year computer science program for free using their online materials, so maybe Mr. Wadhwa has a point, and the millions of college students going into debt today will look completely insane in the near future.

Read more at time.com.