Software, like all technology, is value-neutral. It can serve good as well as evil. And there is no reason why it can't be extremely effective in either manifestation.

But I brought up software because it helps eliminate the teacher from the equation, minimizing his influence by diminishing his numbers and availability to the student, relegating him to a remote scrivener, making him easier to isolate from the student and enabling his work to be easily monitored and controlled. An automated history or sociology curriculum might be effective at communicating dates and names, and it would certainly be useful for marshalling sources and surveying the literature of the discipline; but the kind of concepts, values and interpretative/evaluative skills (i.e., scholarship) alluded to in Bolshie Bob's letter to his student would be difficult to maintain with online pedagogy. It would also be much easier to detect, and nip in the bud, any departures from orthodoxy.

The University is one of the crowning achievements of Medieval Western civilization. Nothing like it existed in Antiquity or Classical civilization, or in Eastern cultures. Many of its institutions, such as academic freedom and tenure, seem awkward and out of date but they evolved for a reason. Modern Capitalism seems determined to dismantle all of it. After all, that is what Utilitarianism was really all about, wasn't it? "The greatest good for the smallest number."