I don't really understand why lectures have continued since the advent of affordable video technology. Every year the departments prepare unique lecture series and deliver them to new students, sometimes the same lecture twice a week because the numbers are so large, interacting very little with the audience, and expecting students to really engage with the new ideas they're exploring this term.
From the student's perspective having a video from some lecturer at Yale or wherever would be just as effective.
Lectures to small classes of say 10 are a different story, but on the scale of modern UK university courses it seems like one of the most inefficient systems imaginable.
I think there is an element of motivation here, because students are more likely to attend a lecture course than they are to watch videos, even if they would find the video course a more efficient use of their time.
If a college just showed videos, students would see through the scam and no longer believe that college was worth tens of thousands of dollars a year, or decades of debt (in the U.S.).
From the student's perspective having a video from some lecturer at Yale or wherever would be just as effective.
Lectures to small classes of say 10 are a different story, but on the scale of modern UK university courses it seems like one of the most inefficient systems imaginable.