The internet for me is a large library, and that's really all I need. So the idea of a digital classroom doesn't excite me as much as most people.
I also fail to see how the stated problem is more than a strawman. If education were really the goal, given the stated 7% completion rate average, classes with more than 2'900 starts should already be beating the meatspace numbers. (cf grocery stores: pitiful profit margins, but they're in the turnover business, and so as a class their bottom line looks like everyone else's)
Education is really pull from the student instead of push from the instructor, anyway. Back when my wife still taught children, she often had to tell parents she wasn't dropping their kids permanently, but that they should try something else for a year, and only come back if the kids really missed it and were sufficiently prepared to be engaged.
Maybe the critical meta-skill is learning to ask interesting questions, but again one is probably better off here learning by doing, as that's not exactly the sort of thing that either governments or employers are enthused about paying for.
-Dave
