Bill Gates believes that in five years the web will play a bigger role than university - Guess what? It's already happening!

At the Technonomy 2010 conference last week Bill Gates made a statement that is currently echoing round the internet world; saying, "Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university". Gates believes university has become far too expensive for students with little funding to attend, costing on average $50,000 (£31,926.00) per year for 4 years; making it harder to get a university level education; while, a year's university education could be done online for as little as $2,000 (£1,277). He also thinks that only technology can make education cheap, and within online learning there is room for innovation, which the current standard system cannot provide.

He describes traditional studies as 'place-based' and inefficient, predicting that university education will become five times less important within five years, with online lecture sources picking up the reins of educating our youth. Gates' view that online learning is ideal for the self motivated learner who will have access to discussion groups, feedback and video streaming and that education away from the classroom should count as a credit; meaning if a university releases courses on the web, a student should be able to study the course at a distance and be recognised for doing so.

What Gates is proposing makes sense, as it is not only the cost of going to university that's a problem, it's also increasingly difficult to actually secure a place at one due to a growing number of students and limited places available. An increasing number of educational institutions are now releasing course materials on the web for anyone to study. In fact Gates' 'school of thought' (excuse the pun!) runs parallel to the idea of The Open University (OU), a system that is well established in the UK, which is open to all people to learn and gain a qualification or degree.

The OU has seen a sharp rise in the number of young people taking its courses and figures show an unprecedented 34% increase in 18 to 24-year-olds doing a distance learning degree. Plus, 70% of OU students study part-time, allowing them to earn money while taking a degree. The University says this can bolster students' chances of getting a job at the end of their studies, and frees them of student debt. The OU now also uses the internet to publish lectures and recently recorded 22.5m downloads on iTunes, claiming a world record for the number of iTunes downloads. They are distributed through the "iTunes U" educational area of the online service. The OU has 525 courses available online.

Online education can clearly reach a much wider range of students giving more people the opportunity to learn for little financial investment. You just need to have the determination and staying power to self manage the courses you undertake.

Photo credit: World Economic Forum