The American Spectator

I am a long time subscriber and really appreciate TAS.

With apologies to your profession, Professor Wolfram, I think we could easily do without 99% of you. And here’s why:

Granted that the “college experience” — at least as it is popularly perceived these days — is a lot more than listening to lectures, taking notes, and then taking tests. Yet that is the essence of it, everything else being extraneous to it to a greater or lesser degree.

Given that, and given our society’s breathtaking electronic communications capabilities, why shouldn’t we get the best professors in each field and have their lectures piped-in to every classroom on every campus in the country? Why, aside from money, shouldn’t students in college “y” benefit from the same high-level of instruction as students in college “x”? Technologically it would be as easy as pie (closed-circuit TV, videotape, whatever), and economically it would drastically reduce the cost of college because we’d be paying only a handful of the best people, instead of legions of mediocrities.