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Economist Alex Tabarrok from the Marginal Revolution blog writes a lead essay recently for the Cato Institute about “Why Online Education Works.” He also created a new online education platform called MRUniversity.com with his fellow-economist and co-blogger at Marginal Revolution. He said their first course in Development Economics showed them they could teach a full course online in less than half the lecture time required in an offline course because they don’t need to repeat themselves in lectures.

Tabarrok has many smart things to say in this Cato essay and you can join the discussion at Cato Unbound along with other commentators who have responded (a counter-argument by Siva Vaidhyanathan, who is the Robertson Professor in Media Studies and Chair of the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia; some skepticism by Alan Ryan who is the former Warden of New College, Oxford, and a frequent commentator on developments in liberal education; and Kevin Carey, director of the education policy program at the New America Foundation, agrees with Tabarrok’s direction and takes it further.)

Tabarrok writes:

Oxford University was founded in 1096, Cambridge in 1209. Harvard, a relative newcomer, was founded in 1636. Other than religions, few institutions appear to have maintained their existence or their relative status for as long as major universities. And few institutions, notably again other than religions, have seen so little change. Oxford in 2012 teaches students in ways remarkably similar to Oxford in 1096, seated students listening to professors in a classroom.