As colleges and universities prepare for the new semester a huge question mark hangs over the whole process of higher education, and indeed education in general. Can distance learning be made to work? New technologies mean that students no longer need to meet in boring old classrooms with professors who may or may not be the best and the brightest. They also won’t need to waste their nights and damage their livers at keg parties, or resist the moral temptations of the mixed dormitory. They will be like scholar monks of the middle ages – alone in their cells with their holy laptops. In the interests of full disclosure, I confess that I taught some college-level undergraduate courses on the internet back in the 1990s when the technique was still in its infancy so, just for once, I do know what I am talking about. The experience made me skeptical. From the student's point of view, it may be a quick and easy way to stack up credits. But it is a horribly impoverished substitute for an