Welcome to the university productivity revolution

Unbundling and automation are going to wipe out most of the colleges that exist today.  If in pretty locations, they will be converted into senior citizen's housing.  Hattip Marginal Revolution.

In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software — with reduced face time with instructors — did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students.

Here is more.  The report was led by William Bowen, an economist who is famous for, among other things, having described education as subject to an inexorable “cost disease” for lack of labor-saving innovation.