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There's something similar to that in the UK, called the Open University, where you study for a degree at home, receiving study material etc through the post. It sounds a bit odd, and used to have a reputation as something that people did while they were in prison, but it has an excellent reputation with some of the country's best academics working for the OU, and is now quite popular with all kinds of people who maybe live too far from an actual university or have work committments that make it too difficult for them to attend.
More generally though, the problem with that kind of system becoming the norm is that most people appreciate actual one-to-one contact with a teacher, finding the more isolated study at home idea a bit impersonal. Also, for people in pre-college education especially, part of the point of school isn't just to learn stuff but to put people in an interactive environment with people their own age. I think it can work in some instances (as happens anyway with the whole home-schooling thing) but as a general policy I don't think it's a good idea. I think the challenge is to try and match the potential for new technology in terms of what people are calling 'distance learning' with a more conventional personal style of teaching.
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