My most recent corporate position was as CEO of a student recruitment agency in the higher education space. One of my prior ventures was a successful independent online course business.

There's 2 angles from which to look at this:
1. Traditional education institutions.
2. Online course creators.

For the traditional space, universities and other tertiary education providers are going to have to look hard and deep to work out why they should not be delivering all their courses online, at lower cost.

University (college) is starting to become more and more about the campus experience and the people you meet rather than the coursework being taught.

For online course creators, many coaches, consultants and experts are going to launch their own coures - and fail, because they don't know how to market them or how to run successful online businesses.

The fallback for this will be marketplaces like Udemy and Lynda, where pricing and promotion is largely out of the course creator's control and they have to settle for a lower income in exchange for assistance in marketing and promotion.

If we put the two spaces together we end up in a situation where both traditional institutions and online course creators are going to have to work hard to prove their value in a marketplace that is flooded with competitors.

Online courses are digital - they are made of 1s and 0s. The value of those to the consumer will go to 1 if the course creator can prove they have something to offer. Otherwise, it goes to 0 as information wants to be free.