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At one session here at Davos, the presidents of Harvard, Stanford and MIT all readily acknowledged that the experiments in new models of online learning will soon radically disrupt higher learning. One expert suggested many universities are facing the early days of bankruptcy. Another predicted there may only be 10 universities that survive this transition.

In retrospect, 2012 may well be remembered as the year when Internet technology enabled the popularity of MOOCs-or massive open online courses-a form of disruptive or transformative education currently growing at a meteoric rate.

"The Academic Senate is expected to vote on Monday on a proposed policy that would forbid the university to sign contracts with outside technology providers without the approval of tenured and tenure-track faculty members in whatever department would be affected."

"All visionary entrepreneurs must, at some point, find their own sense of romance in the compromises they make to build a profitable business, and the size of the crowd is where Thrun finds his. He's moved by the idea of many, many students from many, many places learning something because of him--even if it's something as mundane as a Salesforce.com API. I have a hard time believing that he really wants his son to get Salesforce certified rather than Stanford educated, but in this one thing Thrun seems entirely earnest."

"they've shifted to what's becoming a more familiar Silicon Valley narrative about the future of employability: a cheap and precarious labor force. That's the unfortunate reality of "Uber for Education.""

"A curious disconnect has been emerging in my thinking, one that has been made clear with the hype-oriented buzzwords of today's ed tech companies. I no longer want to be affiliated with the tool-fetish of edtech. It's time to say adios to technosolutionism that recreates people as agents within a programmed infrastructure."

Completion rates and grades were worse than for those who took traditional campus-style classes. And the students who did best weren't the underserved students San Jose most wanted to reach. It wasn't really proving to be cheaper, either, says Peter Hadreas, the chairman of San Jose State's philosophy department.