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Comment by spaldingwell | Hacker News Reader

I'm 27 years old, I have a high income and I really enjoy higher education. At this point I don't care about getting my MA. I just really enjoy education for educations sake.

But I don't feel like there are many places for me to go- auditing courses is the best I've come up with.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has this "demand" ... I just wish there was a way to connect the supply and demand in a better way :)

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I do, too. I don't care about their stupid pieces of paper - I just want to learn more things.

There's been a lot of ink spilled lately about ending the expectation that everyone should go to college. I'd like to see more about how everybody is expected to stop learning after that, unless they're looking for more degrees (or the ubiquitous MBA in marketing/finance), and especially if they have a good job.

I think that the main reason is because a la carte education would collapse its awful pricing structure. Having the majority of your student body not tied to your university for their entire future would end up confusing and improving a lot of things IMO. I'd love to shop by professor, and arbitrarily retake courses of study in my adult life if I feel I'm getting rusty.

In a recent discussion on higher education, someone posted a link to a RollingStone article (which I'm unable to find at the moment) that made a point that I think relates to what you're saying. In the early 80s, there was a fundamental shift in the way education was viewed in this country. Prior to this time period, education was something that was primarily intended as a benefit for society and government provided most of the funding with that understanding. After that time period, the perspective changed to one where an individual was investing in his or her future. Grants started to turn into loans and tuitions rose based on the future payouts that college graduates could expect when compared to less educated workforce.

And I think that new point of view is manifest in your observation. When one views an educated populace as a benefit to society, the kind of continuing education that you mention makes sense. When you take that more individualistic perspective, education that does not produce a monetary return on investment isn't valued and will be harder to come by. The actual education is of secondary concern to the degree that will increase your compensation going forward.

I find hilarious the widespread belief that everyone is expected to spend their first 22 or so years learning full time only to pivot completely away from education once they begin their career.

I've spent the overwhelming majority of my life as a student. I'm certainly not going to let that change just because I'm earning income now.

I'd like to see more about how everybody is expected to stop learning after that, unless they're looking for more degrees . . . .

Who has this expectation? To me your perspective is weird because it suggests that if you're not taking classes you're not learning. And I would say that I often see arguments for college along the lines of it helping you "learn how to learn" on your own.

It is actually harder to learn on your own if you don't have a set curriculum (that is, a dependency graph on academic subjects) and a guide to finding good materials (textbooks and such). Emphasis on the dependency graph: without one, it's far too easy to dive into something, get well over your head, and wind up more confused and frustrated than enlightened. This especially happens in the kind of deep, difficult subjects where you need the guidance of a good textbook or professor more, because not every teacher in the field actually knows the particular subfield.

Did you tried coursera classes? Some of them are bad, but if you choose carefully you can have great learning experience. The way teachers work, difficulty and quality are very different, so there is high chance there is one that would satisfy you.

The problem is that coursera classes thin out dramatically as you reach the graduate (or even middle/upper undergraduate) level of whatever topic silo you are interested in. CS might be an exception, but the offerings in large swaths of chemistry and physics are extremely meager and I imagine that's the case in, say, biology, the humanities, etc.

Universities have precisely the opposite problem: professors love to teach high-level classes in their fields of interest but they don't particularly care for the intro-level classes.

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