Online education

There has been an explosion of interest in Online Education since Stanford made three computer science courses freely available in September 2011 and attracted 300,000 "students." Yet Online Education has been around in various forms for thirty plus years. What accounts for the sudden inflection point sparked by these courses? Will the rush to put courses online prove to be (a) a flash in the pan, (b) the savior of higher education, (c) the death knell of universities as we know them, (d) all of the above?