First, there's little data comparing how well people learn from online courses versus in-person courses. There's a lot of unjustified hype surrounding online education.

In my opinion, online education works well for adults that are motivated learners able to connect course content to relevant aspects of their lives. But online education is often a huge waste of time for your traditional college students. Younger students see them as a game where you do the least possible to get an A. Adults that have to pay out of pocket for education seldom seem to have this outlook.

To the prof at BYU that thinks brick and mortar schools will soon be outdated, I say "sir, you must be one shitty teacher." If all you do is lecture then your students are better off sleeping in and downloading your dull podcast later. If you create an environment in your class where students can actively explore the course material, instead of just listening passively to it, you would see that in-person education blows online ed out of the water.

In a way, India and China were ahead of the US by not relying on cars for everyone to make their economies work. The US is not the ultimate role model to follow. Just because Americans all drive cars doesn't mean it constitutes some new minimum standard of living. America screwed itself over by becoming so oil-dependent. Why would China and India want that just as they are rising economically?

CS is the new English: you need to know a little to do pretty much anything useful these days. I definitely think we should move past just teaching keyboarding and familiarity with Microsoft Office. We should have introductory hardware and software courses that include logic and basic algorithms.

Can you imagine how much more people could innovate in fields like medicine, biology, and social science if those people all knew how to program? This is a great first step to bringing the US back to its former status as an innovator.