Education caused mankind to evolve. He taught language, history, and trades to his children, and made the next generation "smarter" than the previous generation. Education has evolved into what we have today: schools. I say to you, that Schools and teachers shall soon be obsolete, replaced completely by an information technology I call the "Weighted Scales Indexing System".
Brief overview:
This is an indexing system with many scales. The scale values are set by "experts" who vote in a forum similar to educationforum. Data is categorized in the same manner. Imagine the sum of all human knowledge reduced to memes and indexed and rated by the experts. One becomes an expert in a particular field - by taking tests on line and by peer review and acceptance. The better your knowledge, the higher "weight" your votes have.
Here is an example. Imagine a scale for truth - with one end of the scale being fact - and the other end fiction. If it is appropriate to apply the "truth" scale to a meme http://cscs.umich.edu/%7Ecrshalizi/formerl...d/memetics.html then the forum would address and debate challenges to the truth value. Even the system by which individual thoughts are strained out of their containing book, lecture, etc... into memes would be controlled by the experts.
Given this system: One would become an expert, not by paying money and attending classes, but by simply participating in the system.
This shift from a static (when you attend a University you get a snapshot of knowledge at a particular point in time) to a dynamic knowledge base not only does away with Universities (all traditional schools for that matter) but also does away with all Governments.
Think about it. This is the next logical step in the evolution of mankind.. Universities and Governments will resist. But resisting progress is futile!