Three concurrent phenomena threaten the future of liberal arts education. My husband recently retired after 40 years in education. He's done everything from teaching (high school and college) to publishing (textbooks and software) to consulting. He's seen every swing of the pendulum--very little impresses him as a true game changer. But when Harvard and MIT announced edX, their joint online open-education initiative, he made the kind of sweeping statement that he would have scoffed at in the past: "This might be the death knell of the traditional college." The Ivy Lea...