I feel like with the growing popularity of Online Courses these ratios will get even more skewed...
What happens when the majority of courses at a University are pre-recorded sessions from years ago, with only minor updates from year to year?
What happens when the majority of courses at a University are pre-recorded sessions from years ago, with only minor updates from year to year?
It may be better to go to formal physical schools, but it's no longer necessary. Not by a long shot.
It's just going to take another few decades for society to adjust to the fact that university degrees are no longer really that valuable and figure out new ways to evaluate individual competency.
I think people underestimate how difficult it is to self study well enough to get an education like you can get from a (good) university program. Studying is hard! Maybe it is not so hard to learn a little bit. But to learn something with rigour and focus takes a lot of effort, especially if you have other problems to deal with as well. Aside from the value signalling of a degree, paid courses provide a strong motivation to do the uncomfortable and often unrewarding activity of studying.
Source: my own experiences with self-study and a recently started Masters in Biostatistics by distance education, all while working casually or full time.
When reputable schools burn reputation faster than new schools build reputation, it's a broad social problem.
Discipline isn't the only obstacle for autodidacts. If nothing else, at a university you have professors, adjuncts and TAs with office hours who can help you learn something in a fraction of the time it would take to learn by studying a textbook or watching lectures online alone.
For example, vanishingly few people manage to teach themselves an undergraduate math curriculum without going through university.
I loved this because
1. I could watch the tapes on my schedule
2. I could pause or rewind to take notes or better understand something
3. I could fast forward through useless parts.
I remember one particularly useless course where all the professor did was read her slides verbatim. Since I had it on tape I’d just fast forward to the next slide, take some notes, and then repeat. Saved me many hours.