If you want to acquire skills I think online courses are great. Math and computer science are sure to make a transition to online quickly as the method of teaching them is pretty straight forward. But I think the article misses a huge advantage that some students (not all) get from a college or university: connections. Most students don't realize that college is a place to start socializing with people in the industry, or start working with a professor. Today I think college is viewed as a specialized extended education (but something that is required to get a job) and with that view spending outrageous amounts of money to learn a skill is a terrible idea. The reason people spend 150k to go to MIT isn't (or rather shouldn't be) to just learn a skill better, but its because of the connections that come from that institution.