[hgomersall]

Even a degree is self taught. The assessment is typically pretty decoupled from the content. You could say "people that have taught themselves a degree course have a better understanding than those that learnt just enough to pass the assessment".

[bfg_9k]

Agreed. The effective difference between a degree and learning on your own comes down to structure, really. A college course gives you a decent enough structure to know that you do addition, then subtraction before you go trying to learn multiplication. I often find trying to learn things on my own I start from differential calculus in this example and try to work backwards.

[9rx]

> I often find trying to learn things on my own I start from differential calculus in this example and try to work backwards.

Doesn't everyone who has learned how to learn? Learning is way more efficient when you already have forward context for why you are learning something. Nebulously studying addition and subtraction without being able to see that it leads to multiplication (to stay with your example) is an absolutely horrid situation to find yourself in.

In fact, I suspect that's exactly what the article is really trying to get at: Those who "learn backwards", which happens to be a trait commonly associated with self-teaching, outperform.