Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

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"It's just that as of today, there are very few ways of getting education without going to college"

Easily the most outlandishly wrong statement I've heard in years. Except for a very narrow set of STEM courses (such as analytical chemistry) the vast majority of a college education comes about through nothing more than reading books and writing papers. This is something that many folks are entirely capable of doing on their own.

Edit: The strongest proof I have for this sort of thing being the case is the prevalence of people with the "wrong" degrees. For example, one of the most talented developers I worked with was a physicist by education. One of the reasons why this sort of phenomenon is so hard to study in the developed world is because pretty much any individual with the dedication to study any subject is going to be able to get a 4-year degree in that subject in some way (the cheapest way being 2-years of community college for a transfer degree then another 2-years or less at a state school). Given the value of a college degree as a credential there are very few people who wouldn't make that choice.

Engineering degrees require access to expensive equipment and software. Autodidacticism won't magically make a gamma-ray spectrometer appear in your basement.

How many undergraduate college students ever interact with a gamma-ray spectrometer? Indeed, how many ever come into contact with any equipment that is outside the realm of access to an individual studying on their own? Many perhaps, but as a percentage of all college graduates, not that much. Not even all STEM majors require such specialty equipment, and STEM students are a relative minority in college enrollments.

>the vast majority of a college education comes about through nothing more than reading books and writing papers

You went to a shitty college, I guess. Or maybe didn't realise what was going on around you?

(I'm not normally that mean to folk on the internet, but you totally earned it with that ridiculous opener.)

I did make an exception for certain subjects. And no, I went to a good college and I enjoyed the experience. Some of which, such as working with 600 MHz NMR spectrometers and the whole plethora of chemistry laboratory equipment, is very much not the sort of thing one can learn at home. However, such degrees are not the norm. I also studied mathematics, and though many of my professors were quite excellent I have little doubt that motivated self-study with the appropriate books would have produced an equally valuable education in the subject. And that's probably the case for the average course of study. Computer Science? English? Foreign languages? Linguistics? Astronomy? Art? History? Economics? Environmental science? Psychology? These are things that are well within the grasp of self-study, especially today.

"I have little doubt that motivated self-study with the appropriate books would have produced an equally valuable education in the subject"

Much easier said than done. The course plan, deadlines, and grade that are parts of a university course force motivation that often does not exist in self-study. In my case, I've only engaged in "motivated self-study", when I have been very motivated to solve a narrow problem and my studying was similarly narrow.

As I said, pretty much anyone with the motivation to see their own education through is probably just going to go to a cheap college and get a degree as well, since the cost floor on a degree is pretty low for most people in, say, the US. However, I suspect that the advent of ebooks and educational software is going to radically change the landscape. To the degree where people 40 years from now will look at the higher education system we have today and think it is utterly preposterous and primitive.

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