Watching professors struggle with bigger and bigger classes as enrollments inexorably swell, many a college president has eyed TV with a seemingly simple solution in mind: Why not put the professors on television and pipe it to several classrooms? Last week, in London's Sunday Times, Oxford Graduate Geoffrey Wagner, who took part in an experimental televised English-literature course as a lecturer at Columbia University, reported his personal experiences in terms that may give college presidents pause. His verdict: TV will not do.
First of all, said Wagner, it soon "became abundantly evident that no young American could reasonably be expected to sit...