Universities have been forced to online classes, which students quickly see through as being just someone talking while giving links to documents and videos to consume. There’s maybe a hundred dollars of value there in curation, but not $50,000 a semester.

Was all education always just self-education with a mediocre life coach?

Many thought highly of the location or institution. The powerful footprint of the campus ensured it was serious about its mission of teaching the ignorant, and wasn’t just a bunch of adults who knew slightly more than teenagers. The professors weren’t just slackers enjoying an easy gig and the provosts weren’t greedy business guys running a power play for money. The university was well respected, therefore it would always be a great way to attain valuable knowledge.

Multiple factions encouraged kids to take loans for hundreds of thousands of dollars for classes that were just a professor or their grad student representative telling you things that were already recorded online and you could have downloaded at no cost. Did you need to hear the routine live? Or were the students just not serious and needed to have structure imposed upon them in order to be forced to learn a little against their own reluctance?

College is an experience where you get to know yourself, which means to spend a lot of time taking drugs with other kids who don’t know anything, repeating the same follies until you stop impairing yourself. Or you can make the leap without going to college, so long as you are honest about your efforts and realistic in attaining results. A bit of ambition helps too so you push past barriers and strive to cultivate excellence in yourself.

There were always books people could use to educate themselves on all topics. Curriculum paths on any topic were abundant. Most fields also had ways to practice and test whether that knowledge was mastered and see how that aspect of the field correlated to the world.

Some thought the only place all that knowledge could be brought together was on a university campus with its mighty library, giant lecture halls, and office hours with the greatest minds the school could hire. An even better version of all these is available online at a fraction of the price – without physical or time constraints.

Now that the teaching illusion falls and there’s nothing of value justifying the cost, university education looks shoddy in its disheveled nakedness. It also has just set itself up for replacement by far less expensive online education where engaging PhDs will sell their courses 100,000 times for $10 instead of going through the university middle man. Accreditation will be opposed by legacy institutions but eventually prevail and in a matter of years universities will become anachronistic.

With educational costs removed, people with ability to learn will further separate themselves from the mediocre by being able to quickly attain a useful education and then establish an adult life without long-lasting debt to giant campuses reenacting inexpensive internet content.