There's the Khan Academy, too.
Im learning equity investing, and there seem to be never ending stream of free learning material online. Lectures from the top universities, youtube videos that teach you curious spreadsheet skills, assignments. As a matter of fact you have very few reasons to justify anything these days.
It just comes down to personal motivation.
For all practical purposes these days the cost of learning anything is equal to your monthly internet bill.
If you already have a degree, just in the wrong field, you don't need to get another degree. Just get the training by whatever means.
Heck, my degree is in mechanical engineering, yet I had jobs writing software.
There really is a "cult of the degree" and I really don't get it. Is the field getting saturated and employers are finding it necessary to erect barriers? Does this, an average, make good fiscal sense? I would think successful, relevant experience is something (that when verified) would reduce risk for businesses.
Unfortunately, getting that first interview can highly depend on those papers.
Big, mature bureaucracies want formal signals. Small/young businesses and startups care about competence. Google is very large, but I suspect still manages to act "young" in many respects.
Soon they will.
If the internet people come at cheaper prices.
There isn't much difference between people who watch a lecture on the internet vs those who watch it live.
But filtering out the good ones from the "internet people" is more expensive than seeking through college graduates.
Expecting your education to make something of you, instead of making something of your education (track record) is another.
Managing to get a certificate does not guarantee one can apply those YouTube videos.
If someone said they were shutting down local schools and just telling the kids to watch YouTube and ask question online, I'd be horrified, the kids would get far less attention and teaching, and the kids would be far less educated. Also, few would have the self-motivation to pull it off.
Not to knock Khan Academy, etc. completely. One idea I've heard is having students watch the lecture at home - everyone can see the best lecturers in the world - and do their 'homework', with personal attention from the teacher, in class.
In most top universities, teaching largely works through learning by doing. Its just that they keep the quality of assignments high. So your projects make up for it. Also note those taking online courses have an active interest to get good at things, so they would work on these projects.
In the real world you need as much as you can receive from a lecture. Beyond that mostly you have to learn on the job. So online learning will work for most cases. Yeah in some cases you can't fully learn it without a teacher, such cases will exist, but will be exceptions to the rule.
>>If someone said they were shutting down local schools and just telling the kids to watch YouTube and ask question online, I'd be horrified, the kids would get far less attention and teaching, and the kids would be far less educated. Also, few would have the self-motivation to pull it off.
There is a reason why despite all the awesome public education system US has compared to the rest of the world, only a fixed percentage of awesome people come out of it every month.
Every thing at the end comes down to personal motivation. You can't make anyone succeed without their participation and will.