Last week in Lake Tahoe, Bill Gates was the closing speaker at the Techonomy (Technology + Economy) conference, and what he had to say might have been surprising to the faculty and staff at Harvard University, which just recently awarded him his degree, more than 30 years after he dropped out to focus on his baby, Microsoft.  Gates, whose speech was entitled, “How to Jumpstart What the Marketplace Can’t,” told the audience that traditional “place-based” universities were on their way out, and online education is going to be the wave of the future in post-secondary education.

Gates spoke briefly regarding the outrageous costs that American families are facing when their children go to college.  Readers won’t be surprised to learn that Gates believes technology can solve many of the serious issues facing post-secondary education in America, including unaffordable tuition.  Acknowledging that a $200,000 education is simply out of reach, Gates stated his conviction in technology being able to bring down the cost of college for families who are already strapped: “Only technology can bring that down, not just to $20,000, but to $2,000,” said Gates.

According to Gates, “the best lectures in the world” will no longer be at hallowed institutions, reserved only for the privileged and elite, but on the web for everyone who wants access to them.  Activities like attending lectures at lecture halls, which he termed “place-based activities” will be five times less important in five years than they are today.  Gates believes that online education will surpass the conventional model of post-secondary education, with the web providing a far superior network of resources.

One of the most surprising things that Gates implied was that the tradition of students leaving home for college may be phased out as students and families embrace online education.  Stating that “no single university” will have the capability of matching the vast amount of educational information on the web, students who really want an advanced education will be online, not in campus classrooms. “The self-motivated learner will be on the web,” said Gates, reaffirming his faith in technological advances evening out the playing field for students.

American textbooks also came under fire by Gates, who deemed them as “giant, intimidating” books full of unnecessary information because the committees that write them may not be focused on creating an efficient model of learning.  American students must be cheering Gates from their chiropractor’s office, as they are all too familiar with textbooks that Gates says are 2/3 larger than those in Asia that have the same amount of information.

Of course, there will be those pundits who criticize Gates for his position, since he is, after all, the founder of the second largest technology company in the world.  However, Gates has announced that he is stepping down from Microsoft in 2011, in order to center his energies on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  The Foundation is currently working on achieving several very lofty goals, one of which is to “double the number of low-income adults who earn post-secondary degrees or credentials by age 26,” in the U.S.  They are working to implement this goal by helping educational entities use “New technology products and platforms that produce dramatic improvement,” and that will surely include a big dose of online education.