New technology will dramatically alter the way in which we study over the next decade, the University of Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz has argued.

Speaking at the Stephen Perse Foundation education conference last Wednesday, Sir Borysiewicz called attention to the rise of both the cost of attending university, and the increasing popularity of Massive Open Online courses (Moocs). The University of Cambridge, he said, would have to adapt its teaching methods to the new “virtual environment”.

These statements echo previous remarks made by the Vice-Chancellor at a conference organised by student think tank The Wilberforce Society, where he again spoke about the rise in popularity of Moocs.

While the Open University has long been a fixture on the UK virtual education scene, Russell Group and Ivy League universities are now getting in on the act. Moocs have already been successfully introduced at the University of Edinburgh and across the pond at institutions such as Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

At Edinburgh, the online courses are free of charge and cover topics ranging from astrobiology to philosophy, while MIT currently has 2150 free online courses uploaded on the internet, with 152 million hits, and counting. In this respect they present a viable educational alternative to the £9,000 a year British university undergraduate degree.

Yet opinions differ over the importance that the increasing popularity of virtual learning will have in shaping the experience of the university undergraduate, and especially the Cambridge undergraduate, in the years to come. Some argue that lectures and study material would be made more accessible if they could be accessed online and viewed in the comfort of one’s own home.

Two undergraduates I spoke to believed that the same cannot be said, however, for the collaborative, interpersonal nature of seminars and supervisions. They both consider their Cambridge learning experience to be shaped by the interactive nature of the education they receive, and that any amount of virtual learning would not improve on the supervision system.