[lazyguy2]

If your goal is education there is no need to go to a university anymore. There really isn't even any need to attend K-12 schools.

It may be better to go to formal physical schools, but it's no longer necessary. Not by a long shot.

It's just going to take another few decades for society to adjust to the fact that university degrees are no longer really that valuable and figure out new ways to evaluate individual competency.

[ImaCake]

>If your goal is education there is no need to go to a university anymore.

I think people underestimate how difficult it is to self study well enough to get an education like you can get from a (good) university program. Studying is hard! Maybe it is not so hard to learn a little bit. But to learn something with rigour and focus takes a lot of effort, especially if you have other problems to deal with as well. Aside from the value signalling of a degree, paid courses provide a strong motivation to do the uncomfortable and often unrewarding activity of studying.

Source: my own experiences with self-study and a recently started Masters in Biostatistics by distance education, all while working casually or full time.

[lonelappde]

The value of a school (or alternative study arrangement) is in its reputation for educating students well, in the eyes of the students and employers.

When reputable schools burn reputation faster than new schools build reputation, it's a broad social problem.

[throwawaymath]

For most people, a university is the most time-efficient method of gaining education in any given technical topic. It's not guaranteed to be the most cost-efficient, but I don't see a defensible argument that the resources of a university don't make it possible to learn faster than self-study, for the modal student.

Discipline isn't the only obstacle for autodidacts. If nothing else, at a university you have professors, adjuncts and TAs with office hours who can help you learn something in a fraction of the time it would take to learn by studying a textbook or watching lectures online alone.

For example, vanishingly few people manage to teach themselves an undergraduate math curriculum without going through university.