...and it's still higher than what I sold the last of my BTC for.

That site doesn't quite do that, as individual costs are based on an array of factors other than just your zip code. More FUD.

There is still a great need for smaller, more focused classes at the university level. From your comment, it seems you haven't had the pleasure of one of these, because you are certainly expected to learn on your own. The face-to-face interaction and being around other people helps you learn different skills (presenting research is an important one in the sciences), and having a smaller (6-10 students) class allows for greater depth and discussion to be achieved. If you're still in college, I highly recommend taking some classes. And in graduate school, nearly all of your classes will be like this. So no, it's not a necessity just for grade school (unless you want to make the case that graduate students are bumbling morons and akin to 3rd graders, and I'm sure there are some faculty who would agree).

I agree wholeheartedly, but with widespread cutbacks and the like causing even public flagship universities to act more like the 'University' of Phoenix (okay, slight hyperbole), universities (and their state government patrons) are doing a well-enough job of killing the university model -- and that is a bad thing. You'll hear the same from many disgruntled faculty who are being heavily pressured to put their courses fully online, typically by recording lecturettes and writing summaries to hold students' hands through the material. And don't get me started on online quizzes/exams and the rampant (and obvious) cheating. These classes force one professor and 1-2 TAs to deal with 300+ students for classes that normally have one professor, one TA, and 30-70 students. The larger traditional courses (i.e. not online) typically have 5-10+ TAs covering 250 students (who don't have to come to the TAs for technical problems like they do with online courses) and are for introductory courses, while entire departments (including smaller, more focused courses) are being forced to go all online to reduce costs. This is something I've witnessed firsthand and have been on both sides of it - both as an undergraduate student and as a graduate TA that helped migrate courses to the online platform our university is using. It's crap.