In my self-education I followed the best possible principles: I created my environment to have motivation, sought fundamental goals like freedom, tried to simplify concepts to the basics,learned from mentors in one-on-one conversations, tried everything in practice, went fast, tried to earn while I learn. As a self-learner you can learn anything you want, using any approach you like from any expert. You’ll be in charge of your speed and direction.
University is old both as a concept and as an individual institution. The world today changes much faster than it can follow. Health has components that the university might jeopardize, you’re likely to experience stress or not getting enough sleep. The university costs money and time to attend. In the top universities of the world you can meet great people, but in most universities – probably not.
Remember that even for the best of the best universities it’s still a trade-off! In 4 years, with the time and money saved, you can build a financial asset worth 6-figures that brings you steady monthly income.
If you want to be a doctor and save lives, questions about freedom, money and return on investment are irrelevant. The same goes for therapists, we need a lot more of them too. We all need doctors and engineers of all kinds.
IT experts, office administrators, advertising, sales, marketing, writers can and better be self-taught. But as much as I love chaos and creativity, I’m not in support of self-taught doctors, construction engineers and airline pilots. The cost of some errors is too high. We’ll need to keep some places open, even if not currently of the highest educational quality. When we close some universities, government funding can increase for the rest.
Here is what I think should be removed (all fields equally or better learned in practice): IT stuff, economics except for accounting, marketing, advertising and sales, writing and journalism, foreign languages and culture, sports.
Here is what I think should be downscaled: some humanities.
Here is what I think should be kept: highly specialized occupations like pilots, sailors, police academies, first responders, math and exact sciences, statistics, sociology, engineering, law, arts
Here is what should be increased and better funded: medicine, psychology.
Responsibility is extremely important for us and our participation in society. If you study till 25+, you take responsibility at a later age. You are likely to have less youth enthusiasm and idealism, less energy and family and kids may be on the horizon. Which means that the window within which you can fight for social change and a better world with all of your time and energy is already closing. You can still do it, and should if possible. But there is no reason to wait that long. People suffer needlessly every day from issues we can collectively solve.
