It seems as if most first world countries would fairly easily be able to put in place a dedicated platform for the transmission of educational material in a coordinated manner that could be streamed into virtually every home or to mobile devices.

Imagine a world where you could effectively utilize your wifi modem, television, DVR, and printer, to watch high quality lectures, record, pause, and print transcripts / notes... all in the comfort of your home, along with a few good friends, and a bowl of snacks, while lounging on your favorite sofa.

The costs involved in building and maintaining traditional brick and mortar institutions are astronomical, given that they can only service a fixed maximum number of students.

By scaling up the number of students who would otherwise have to be housed in lecture halls, education can eventually become truly democratized, giving everyone the opportunity to receive the best content, regardless of financial considerations.

There would also be interesting spinoff benefits, besides educating hordes of the populace, the amount of time and money saved by simply not having to travel daily to university, as well as a concomitant reduction in carbon emissions will definitely have an impact on our lives.

As far as practical work is concerned, there will always be a need for actual physical demonstrations, and these could be conducted at satellite venues which could arrange timetables to ensure optimal utilization as well as limit individual student attendance to one or two days per week.

In an ideal world, those that can afford the relatively low voluntary fees would be billed, while a needs test could be conducted to exempt deserving students from paying.