Bill Gates attended the Technonomy  conference earlier this week, and had quite a bold statement to make about the future of education. He believes the web is where people will be learning in five years from now, not colleges and university.

During his chat he said:

Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university

His argument as to why this will happen are two-fold. On the one hand university has become far too expensive for students with little funding to attend, costing on average $50,000 per year for 4 years. It is therefore harder to achieve an education at university level.

On the other, he believes text books in the West are far too intimidating for many students. He also points out that students in Asia are outperforming the West, and their books are a third of the size of ours.

Gates’ reasoning is based on the assumption that education away from the classroom should count as credit. So if MIT release courses on the web, a student should be able to study them at home and get credit for doing so. And the cost? He believes the $50,000 a year university education could be done via the web for as little as $2,000.

Read more at TechCrunch