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Comment by andrewparker | Hacker News Reader

Many of the online learning solutions quoted throughout this comment thread are excellent for people who are autodidactic (and I suspect a vastly disproportionate % of the HN audience are autodidactic).

But, for everyone else who lack the will power, discipline, attention span for self-education, college is a great way to structure higher education. College is more than just a piece of paper, it's an opportunity to explore new subject matters and grow both intellectually and socially.

College isn't for everyone. Most private colleges are too expensive to be affordable to 90% of the attendees. But, nearly every state offers a high quality public university at 1/10th the price, so if cost is the main reason why college is taking such criticism in this forum, then I'd agree in merit, but I'd encourage more students to consider public college options instead of skipping college all together.

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But, for everyone else who lack the will power, discipline, attention span for self-education, college is a great way to structure higher education.

This is a great and accurate comment; it reminds me of what I wrote about in "Policies have consequences: Teacher edition" (http://jseliger.com/2011/03/06/policies-have-consequences-te...), in response to another HN thread.

The gap between the rhetoric I see on HN regarding education and what I see in classrooms is so vast as to be amazing. Many if not most people simply won't do something educational or vaguely educational unless there's some kind of external structure in place to make them do it—for more on this phenomenon, see Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational. The HN commenters who are wildly self-motivated and, as you say, auto-didactic, are the exception.

Which is great, by the way, and, as many commenters point out, the Internet is a great way for to achieve educational and intellectual goals. What the commenters miss is one thing: it's great for the highly motivated and interested. For everyone else, it doesn't hurt, but it's also not a substitute.

K-12 schooling (plus "because I said so" and "asking why too much is annoying" style parenting) is one of the main factors creating people without motivation who are alienated from learning.

People aren't born with original sin. They don't always suck. It's not innate. Their educators fail them, fail to teach them how to learn, fail to teach them that learning doesn't have to hurt, but instead convince them that learning does hurt through years of suffering, boredom, and not learning much.

So, you're right that most people at age 18 are not very good candidates for a life path that requires initiative, motivation, self-learning, etc... But that doesn't mean the current system is the right thing for those people. It not only does a pretty terrible job of helping them at a high price (college doesn't teach them how to learn, how to love learning, how to take initiative), it created a significant part of their problem due to systematic failures in approach to education.

Learning is inherently awesome, but schools (and parents and culture) convince people otherwise.

E-learning doesn't prevent you from building a structure and motivational tools(i.e. peer pressure). You could, together with a few class mates, do a weekly/daily study group , using google+ hangouts.

Yes, college may be a worthwhile endeavor. The question is, should it be a required endeavor.

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