| The aspect of university which can be replicated in self study is the aquisition of knowledge from a source. Regardless of the source, your professor saying "Display text in Python with the 'print' command." or you reading it in a book, you will need to put in the same mental effort to learn it. This process is the core aspect of education. What university provides is a number of side things which assist in this process. 1. An expert in the field who can advise you from experience what information is important, where the best information sources are, and in which order to approach things. 2. Feedback on how well you understand the material via discussion groups, assignments and examinations. 3. The opportunity to ask questions about the material. These sound cliched but they are really important. The alternative is a person who is doing something in an inefficient way because they don't know the better way, they don't even know that there is a better way, and the answers they are producing are incorrect because they are blindly applying the inefficient method when it doesn't work in this case. University also provides access to credentials through grades and letters of recommendation, a network of peers who will likely end up in a similar industry to you, and various social/clubs things. My advice would be to pick courses with these advantages in mind. - Do I know how I would learn this field? Maybe the topic is so large or new that there is no standard text and you will need a guide. - Could I obtain easy feedback if I self-studied? You can check arithmetic on a calculator but it's harder to look at a piece of your writing and know if you are improving and what needs correction. - Do I want to build connections with this industry? Selling software to engineers might be easier if you know something about the domain, and know some engineers who can vouch for you and tell you what problems they have. |