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I'm a graduate student in the sciences and every biology, chemistry and physics class that I took had a lab, except the evolution class. You could put the lectures online, but universities will never be completely replaced, as long as people want to learn science or do research.

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>as long as people want to learn science or do research

Maybe this will create a large demand for amateur level/mass producable/cheap lab equipment and that would eventually lead to a situation like PC vs Server where even top notch servers are ~ comodity hardware on steroids. This would lower the barrier for innovation significantly.

hmm, at Caltech (my school) the courses are very much divided into either lecture courses or lab courses, and the phys/chem/bio majors probably have 2/3 lecture classes and 1/3 lab classes. The lecture only classes could very easily be put into an online format.

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