Now it might be very librarian of me to say that I will miss the library…but I will.
Once my access to the, easy to use single-sign-on, university portal ends I will not be able to access the various ejournals I have kept an eye on over the three years, many in areas such as business and health not directly related to the education/technology schools of my course. In the form of non-Open Access journals the publishers are effectively helping the universities maintain a legacy control on knowledge from the pre-web era.
Certainly I opted for the course I did knowing I could use the excellent SCONUL Access scheme. SCONUL Access allows students, at participating UK Higher Education institutions, to visit other physical collections. However, it was the ejournals that were really useful for my general development even with some of the problems in trying to access materials across different vendor platforms.
Of course University libraries have supported Open Access for a long time now and hopefully this can continue so libraries are empowered to play their part in getting students attached to key information sources. Students can then go on using and contributing to these resources, and other quality resources and peer reviewed activities, during the rest of their lifelong learning. The possible death of publishing has been well documented elsewhere, all I would say is that the journals do not just need to be open/affordable but also as easy to use/access as any other thought leadership in the modern era.
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 