Re: Which is it?
You need to be there because not all of the purpose of going to university is to sit in lectures. Even within the direct context of doing a course it's easily possible to see that while lectures may not be able to happen, things like supervisions/tutorials may well be able to happen to some extent, access to the library and other facilities that the university provides may well be able to happen to some extent and so on.
Outside the direct context of the course, people go to university for reasons which are not just 'sitting in a lecture theatre': they also go to be away from home, for instance. And again, while not all of the things students traditionally do may be possible (having sex with lots of other students for instance), some of them still are.
And of course such programs are also, to some extent, immigration programmes in light disguise. Those programmes are based on qualification: people turn out to want their doctors to be, well, doctors, for instance, and what these people are doing is getting the qualification which certifies some of that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
