Somewhere down the YouTube rabbit holes that have become far too familiar in the late-night solitude of the past six months, I stumbled upon a series of philosophy lectures from a group of academics who teach at the University of Nottingham.
Although the video titles seemed intriguing, I admit that my expectations were relatively low and all I was expecting to see was some random professor teaching his or her usual class through the shaky, low quality lens of a phone camera.
What I found was pleasantly surprising. 
These lectures–if it’s even accurate to call them that–were almost like miniature documentaries, featuring professionally filmed expert monologues intermingled with music and visual aids. They were substantial, yet easy to binge-watch, each running at approximately 30 minutes long.
But perhaps the most striking thing about this lecture series was its unsuspecting popularity: it had been raking in hundreds of thousands of views.
This example is not unique. The past five years have seen an explosion of serious academic content online, particularly pertaining to the humanities and social sciences.
Youtube, its format uniquely well-suited for long-form lectures and video essays, has been the epicenter of this movement, making viral celebrities out of primarily intellectual figures like culture critic Natalie Wynn, also known as “Contrapoints,” and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson.
On some level the website has long nurtured this environment of scholarly curiosity, with channels like Crash Course and The School of Life offering bite-sized introductions to a wide variety of ideas and disciplines.
But although entities like Crash Course certainly have their niche, this recent rise of online academe, exemplified by the Nottingham lectures, speaks light-years beyond the mild, elementary blathering of the Green brothers. These new community leaders comprise a wide variety of serious thinkers developing challenging, cutting-edge ideas and sharing them exclusively on the internet.  
This puts universities, who are naturally the traditional suppliers of this sort of intellectual instruction, in a potentially difficult position.
For centuries these institutions have acted as the gatekeepers of human knowledge, providing elites access to truth, art and culture in exchange for absurd amounts of money. The internet has disrupted the university’s age-old monopoly on academia, resulting in what I believe to be an unprecedented democratization of information and quality instruction. 
This seems to be particularly problematic for the humanities and social science departments which, despite being home to some of the most fascinating and life-ennobling disciplines one can study, have struggled against prevailing trends of rising tuition and extreme cultural careerism. 
Many passionate young people who would usually consider a major in arts or the humanities are rightly posing the question: why should I entrench myself in thousands of dollars of debt for information that I can get for free online?  
It’s a valid question, yet there are unavoidable drawbacks to socialized academia, as it can give way to the rise of charlatans, making it harder for the general public to discern between quality scholarship and misinformation.  
There have always been, and always will be, pseudo-intellectuals. Nowadays, however, literally anyone with access to the internet can amass a loyal flock of followers by spilling conspiratorial nonsense as long as it’s wrapped in the right rhetoric. Situations like these become especially dangerous when political or religious undertones are added to the mix.  
Still, not all hope is lost for the university, which maintains the benefit of providing a formal academic framework, the chance to regularly interact with experts and peers alike and, perhaps most importantly, the potential for accreditation in one’s field. 
If modern universities and liberal arts departments have the will to survive–and it is undoubtedly in society’s best interest that they do — serious changes in their fundamental outlook desperately need to be considered moving forward.  
When thinking about ways higher education could better secure its quality and cultural prominence for the future, it might be helpful to take a cue from the Nottingham professors. Universities need to develop new ways to make what they provide, especially in the liberal arts, approachable and economically feasible.
Activity on the internet has proven that rising generations are eager to engage with the fundamental questions of human life and knowledge. It is time for universities to step up, capture this curiosity and guide it to its full potential. 
Evan Leonhard is a 19 year-old English and philosophy junior from New Orleans, Louisiana.