<p>if instead of going to college, you spent an equal time reading and thinking about challenging material? How important do you think the student/professor dynamic really is? Is it important enough to shell out 50k a year? Are there any classes which this method could not substitute--off the top of my head, I can think of language classes which require oral practice.</p>
<p>No – part of education is meeting others and sharing ideas. There is as much of a social aspect to education as there is an academic part.</p>
<p>Maybe, if I had the type of motivation to study like that on my own.</p>
<p>I’d venture to say at least half of the things you learn in college have nothing to do with lectures or books.</p>
<p>I guess you could if you were some sort of deep thought major… But if you are any of the quantitative major it just wouldn’t work.</p>
<p>You could likely teach yourself everything you can learn in the college classroom (even quantitative subjects). However, unless you’re comp sci, a poet/writer, or an entrepreneurial genius, you won’t be given the opportunity to prove that you, say, are a great engineer. There’s the exception every once in a while where one makes a huge breakthrough, but the odds of that happening are exceptionally slim. See, our society values the piece of paper that says you studied X for 4+ years more than the fact that you actually know it. That piece of paper proves you’re capable of doing a job, and without it, you’ll have a much harder time getting by.</p>
<p>You mention language classes…you could travel to the country in which it is spoken for about the cost of the class.</p>
<p>I was homeschooled all the way from 1st grade through high school. I cannot learn from a lecture, but I go anyways. All my learning is done at home in my own room when I study and read the material.
There are a couple reasons that learning at home is not a substitute for college. The first most obvious one is that you don’t get that little piece of paper at the end stating that you graduated. Unfortunately, for many careers you just aren’t going to get anywhere without it. The other thought is that a class gives you direction of WHAT to study. I’ve read so much on the topic of Biology, but, a lot of the basics are still foreign to me because I don’t really know what to study on my own. A professor gives you direction for what you should learn and also usually gives you a way to prove that you learned the material.</p>
<p>There is something to be said about having a structure of classes. If you’re trying to start learning about, say Linguistics, where do you start? Having some sort of “Intro to Linguistics” class there should help guide you along the major topics. </p>
<p>But paying 50K/year for that structure is silly. </p>
<p>Is the education alone worth the cost, absolutely not. No reasonable (there are unreasonable people on CC) person would say it is. The certification is worth the cost though. People are mostly paying for the certification, not the education. If a school opened offering education quality on par with UChicago or Harvard for a quarter of the price but offered no degrees, no one would go. </p>
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<p>Outside of labs, about 90% of the material I’ve learned has come from books or papers, or could come from talking about it to strangers on the internet. Information is delivered through the lectures, but it’s usually a repeat of what comes from the book.</p>
<p>Interesting.</p>
<p>I used to think that college was pointless because almost everything you learn at college, you could learn on your own. But after experiencing my first year, I’ve learned things in college that I don’t think I would’ve learned as quick in the real world. Certain aspects of college certainly do prep you for the real world. I think college teaches you things about the real world faster than you would’ve learned had you not gone to college. Because to be frank, everything you learn in college (outside the classroom), you learn at some point in life.</p>
<p>I also think when you’re given tests and stuff and pressure is put on you, it can motivate you to learn the material in a way that you can’t get anywhere else, even if you give yourself the test.</p>
<p>Some people (like me, I’ll admit) revert to the regurgitate-and-forget method when faced with that, but I think it’s important still.</p>
<p>I’m not motivated enough to study things I don’t like. I would say I did most of my History & Anthropology learning this last semester outside of class.<br>
If I taught myself I would probably stay at high school level math and science forever.</p>
<p>Of course not.</p>
<p>I could read all the same books, sure. But only through close discussion with classmates and professors and listening to multiple interpretations have I been able to start forming a comprehensive understanding of the material. Without that aspect, it would simply be me in discussion with me, which would be very boring and intellectually un-stimulating indeed.</p>
<p>Why are you paying 50k a year? o.O</p>
<p>I think you could teach yourself subjects like math/computer science (very solitary subjects)… but the whole point of subjects like literature and history is discussion and interaction with experts. You couldn’t really get by yourself what college students get out of a humanities program.</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>I’m not in college yet, but I will be a special education major. There’s not enough reading and challenging myself in the world that could prepare me in the same way as sitting in a class and having discussions about different teaching and learning styles and how to reach every student in my future classrooms. Also, it would be quite limiting. I might think I’m a perfect teacher, but it’s not until I see someone else or have someone else critique me in the classroom or critique my lesson plan that I will realize that I need improvement and how to improve. Books are nice and dandy, but it’s a lot more difficult in practice and in the real world. College isn’t like high school. I’m not going to college to get a general degree in facts that I may never use again. What I learn in college will directly affect my career, and I would never rely on my limited experience and knowledge and a book to prepare me for life.</p>
<p>I’m a professor and I frequently learn stuff/have new insights during class discussions. I imagine that the effect would be even stronger for someone encountering the material for the first or second time. Besides, it’s just more fun to talk about ideas with other people!</p>
<p>More like 16K a year (8K if you just lived at home) 
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<p>Any way I don’t think I would. I could certainly know a lot of things, but I wouldn’t necessarily understand them the way I would if I had a professor explaining things and promoting discussion of the material.</p>
<p>Great points. I just threw out the 50k/year because I know it’s a fairly standard price tag for most private universities.</p>
<p>Most students don’t attend expensive private universities though.</p>