The further in time I am removed from my university years, the more convinced I become that the social interaction was the true root of the experience's value. To quote Stephen Leacock's 1920 take on university life:

"The real thing for the student is the life and environment that surrounds him. All that he really learns he learns, in a sense, by the active operation of his own intellect and not as the passive recipient of lectures. And for this active operation what he needs most is the continued and intimate contact with his fellows. Students must live together and eat together, talk and smoke together. Experience shows that that is how their minds really grow.

[...]

If I were founding a university -- and I say it with all the seriousness of which I am capable, I would found first a smoking room; then when I had a little more money in hand I would found a dormitory, then after that, or more properly with that, a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had money over that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor and get some textbooks."

Source: https://news.library.mcgill.ca/stephen-leacocks-the-need-for...