[Sxubas]

Chat gpt is already free to a very generous extent, and covers 80% (if not more) of the learning resources you could need for almost any topic, theory-wise. I'd risk saying it can adapt for most people's needs.

For practical knowledge you just need to do it over and over. A good mentor/teacher would help a lot, but the very very basics I'd say are learnable by yourself. It's as simple as doing it over and over and keeping a critical eye on what went good and not.

As a result, I don't think free public colleges would enable more people to -actually- learn compared to what we have today. However, I find it would be a great place to build community and find people with similar interests to you, which is quite rare to do without an app these days.

[stego-tech]

See, I'm worried about relying on LLMs for learning given their penchant for hallucinations and the early studies showing they're actually bad for learning or cognitive improvement, since they remove the "research" and "critical thinking" phases of problem solving for entry-level stuff - fundamental skills that are necessary to put something into practice independently and learn from mistakes. Sure, teachers/professors can also make stuff up (and often with more damage given their position as a "reliable authority"), but in a classroom setting it feels like that'd be found out faster than using a ChatGPT that's spitting out bad results.

> However, I find it would be a great place to build community and find people with similar interests to you, which is quite rare to do without an app these days.

This is what a lot of detractors seem to miss about the benefits of in-person learning. Team projects force you to interact with strangers and cooperate for the benefit of the whole. Campuses increase the likelihood of chance encounters. They get you out of your home and into the community, which helps you feel connected to your actions and their outcomes.

The knock-on effects are often greater than the immediate benefits.