https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education#:...
Maybe I’m a bit of an outlier, but I still watch lecture series on YouTube long after graduating college and didn’t really have time to audit courses alongside my other courses in college.
Or, since you know the place, you can just drop in and ask the prof if it's ok to sit in. They'll probably say yes and be happy to have you sit in their class (i.e. not demand you enroll and pay the fee; Professors generally aren't big on toeing the line on such rules). This is extremely common.
The problem is there are so many people with degrees, and there's a vague but established pecking order of universities. People still would rather hire someone from a top uni, especially in the Anglosphere. For most things that aren't dev work it's like the old IBM quote, you won't get fired for hiring the Harvard grad.
For not-top unis that teach you the same stuff, I think they're gonna be in trouble. The mini-mill has already been built, and there's a huge gap in price that will only make it more attractive to just do a degree online.
Even looking at my own education, it could have been done a lot faster. In terms of time it added up to 96 weeks of class time. At the time you needed professors meaning it had to be spread over 4 years, so you got a bit of socialising as well, but it's have loved to just do a massive intense 2 year course and be done with it. Fact is you socialise better at work: you'll have more varied people and a bit of cash to pay for stuff.
It might just be my university, but to me that reads like a joke. The last semester has been utterly useless to me. I might as well have taught myself (actually, I mostly did.)
You are always self-taught. That's the only way to actually learn . University only does three things
1) pacing and structure ,
2) grouping you with other similar level peers you learn along with
3) giving access to experts who can help when stuck in a complex topic.
Some people don't need a lot of this , some do. Most attend to get a job after graduation not because they may or may not need assistance to learn.
There is a pedagogical and psychological question of how much one learns from reading books on ones own, at one's owns pace and reading order - and how much one learns from lecture, from speaking to the professor before, during and after class and during office hours, and from working with and talking with other students taking these classes. Plus access to the library, the computer network and different servers, computer rooms, internships, student computer club meetings and open talks etc. Plus the usual of making friends, growing as a person, having access to a nice gym and swimming pool etc.
Does the unguided student even know what to study? I took graph theory for a semester and wondered why it was a prerequisite until my data structures course where I dealt with trees, graphs etc. How many people without a Bachelors in Computer Science can explain the difference between O(n) and O(log n), other than maybe they know O(log n) is faster? Yes, having a BSCS doesn't guarantee you can, but I rarely meet people without a BSCS who have any kind of theoretical basis in computer science. Maybe they went to a bootcamp for a few weeks/months and can code CRUD apps in Javascript.
I can go on...I took a writing class from a very good teacher. Although this would probably fall off the path of any focus on STEM, it improved my writing skill. Reading e-mails, instant messages, documentation, code review comments, code comments, architecture plans, presentations etc., I think a lot of people can do with a good course in writing, and it would help more IT projects get on track if people knew how to write and communicate clearly. It is not something on the clear path of STEM, but in a sense it is, and is just another thing college helps at. It can refine people in a way that helps them go on to professional work.
Very much depends on the subject. And sure you could've always learned via books, but if you go that route you will be spending a big multiple of the time to gain the core knowledge than you would have at university, because as a non-subject matter expert, you can't judge yet what's going to be important or not.
It might work well for computer science, as that's more or less a subject native to the internet, but for most other subjects there is basically nothing there. I'm currently studying biochemistry as an undergrad, and for every course beyond the second semester, there are barely any resources available. I wouldn't even dare and dream of a full open source(/access) curriculum like they exist for CS.
However, if online learning could be paired with effective online tutoring, than I think you are absolutely right.
The amount of learning that happened outside of classes, during labs with my peers, was on par with lecture halls if not more. I've seen side projects, discussed random technologies, even startup MVPs on Campus. That will be hard to replicate going fully remote.