Are College Campuses Obsolete?

22 April 2014
Michael Guerriero

On one recent night, the Open to Debate formerly known as Intelligence Squared U.S. debate series put forth a motion on Columbia University’s campus: More Clicks, Fewer Bricks: The Lecture Hall Is Obsolete. This is a heavily contested territory, as both the setting and the style of the debate reflected. Columbia itself is the owner of quite a few nice-looking bricks, but, only last month, the university signaled its intention to start producing online courses. The Intelligence Squared events are inspired by traditional Oxford debates, decided by the votes of the audience, but they’re judged electronically. The points and counterpoints were streamed and tweeted live, but in tone, the evening still evoked the charm of a winsome classroom professor: percussive jazz-fusion tracks piped in before, friendly anecdotes during, and a reception, in lieu of office hours, after.