Are We Going the Way of Newspapers

Here is an interesting piece from the Washington Post titled A Virtual Revolution is Brewing for Colleges.
The following section caught my eyes:

"Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing
information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private
U.S. colleges cannot survive. "

The article points out that with the invention of online education the barriers to informations have broken down.

"Both newspapers and universities have traditionally relied on selling
hard-to-come-by information. Newspapers touted advertising space next to
breaking news, but now that advertisers find their customers on Craigslist and
Cars.com, the main source of reporters' pay is vanishing. Colleges also sell
information, with a slightly different promise -- a degree, a better job and
access to brilliant minds. As with newspapers, some of these features are now
available elsewhere. A student can already access videotaped lectures, full
courses and openly available syllabuses online. And in five or 10 years, the
curious 18- (or 54-) year-old will be able to find dozens of quality online
classes, complete with take-it-yourself tests, a bulletin board populated by
other "students," and links to free academic literature. "

They also point out that not all students come to college for the sake of learning, and some view education as a comodity with a price tag.

But the demand for college isn't just about the yearning to learn --
it's also about the hope of getting a degree. Online qualifications cost a
college less to provide. Schools don't need to rent the space, and the glut of
doctoral students means they can pay instructors a fraction of the salary for a
tenured professor, and assume that they will rely on shared syllabuses. Those
savings translate into cheaper tuition, and even before the recession, there was
substantial evidence of unmet demand for cheaper college degrees. Online degrees
are already relatively inexpensive. And the price will only dive in coming
decades, as more universities compete.