I took six months off for the OSDSM. I am very aware that it was a luxury to do so. I had to take loans, move out of my apartment, and I studied 10 hours per day.

If you weren't working 10 hours per day, 6 days per week for six months (1440 hrs), and you took 6 hours per week to do the same, it would take you more than 4 years to finish a similar curriculum.

Managing your time is still the hardest part of self-study. It always will be. Most people pay institutions to structure their lives with a workload, deadlines, time off, expectations, and consequences (positive and negative). Having the time for self-study is a luxury few people have; most people won't have the time, money, and opportunity to give up for a "classic liberal education," and by extension they won't have time for self-study, either (one such conversation on the topic: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/loud-nathan-he...). That's part of why new forms of education like The OSDSM are so necessary. Such curriculums fit exceptional cases that are less and less the exception.

If you constrain a problem enough it eventually becomes impossible. There is no royal road to learning hard things, you just have to put in the time.

It is actually not too bad. I picked up all of these things in my undergraduate studies and some side classes.