Look, such is the beauty of South by Southwest – you don’t make it into the panel of your choice (I’ll get you next time, ‘Future of Influence!’) and as you dejectedly stumble across the crowded hallway contemplating your options, you find yourself in an interesting panel you never even considered before.

All around me various young people rush off to get their BAs and MBAs, agonizing over their choice of school, concentration and trying to finish under the traditionally-allotted time. PepsiCo spends a lot of time and effort to recruit from traditional school campuses virtually every year. Many Conn3ct members attended a prestigious school or two.

Yet here are two respected professors from Miami of Ohio, telling a room full of people that departments within universities shouldn’t exist and that tenure should be abolished. In fact, they were positively giddy in describing the choices that online learning and teaching provides students and adamant that online degrees 9or no degrees at all) are the way of the future.

Being something of an educational theory junkie (hi, I’m Julia and I’m a dork – as such, I am contractually and genetically obligated to be interested in bizarre topics), I appreciate this novel view of the secondary educational landscape of the future. However, I also am cautious to embrace it – I still feel that online-only education lacks certain quality control. Furthermore, with the for-profit education on the rise, I wonder what will happen to all philosophy, gender studies, and other non-commercial topics of education.

Did you go the traditional route of education? Did you like it? Was something lacking? Give me your thoughts