In regards to self guided study, don't fall into the trap of thinking that because you could do it, everyone else could.
This is going to sound really conceited and condescending, but I'm going to write it anyway:
I reckon that I could've finished my BSc in Computer Science in probably half the time required. I attended only about 2 weeks of lectures per semester, generally didn't start assignments more than a week before they were due, and didn't study more than about 3 days before the exam.
For most people though, that doesn't work. They need to go to lectures, they need to study for a couple of weeks before exams, they need to attend the tutorials. Structured learning and the education system is made for the bottom 95% of the population. Schools spend a lot more time, money, and effort on special education and learning support for less gifted students than they do for the gifted ones. It's different at every school, but I remember that through most of primary school, there were no supplemental learning or other activities for gifted students. I was stuck in the same normal stream as everybody else. It wasn't until I got to high school, where students were streamed into different classes, that I actually got pushed to learn and use my abilities, the top stream was basically pushed a year ahead of all the other students.
Even for the normal stream of people though, there are people who will excel in certain areas and struggle in others. But a teacher has a class of 30 students to teach. The education system is made for the masses, we would likely get better educational outcomes from having much smaller class ratios, 10 students per teacher maybe, but nobody has the money to pay that many teachers, and there aren't that many teachers out there.
Anyway, my point is that for the HN community, being given a set of learning goals and being told to find a way to learn them would work. For most people, they would flail around and struggle.