/lit/ - Literature

>>12801439
No, it's much easier to learn when you have someone with experience guiding your way. The most useful aspect of university is the 1 on 1 time with the professors.

shit thread

>>12801443
So you will just say it's better to go to university because you will have more reflection? That dismisses all the time wasted? Also you are positing that profs are generally good, which i don't agree too. Academia is on a down trend, having a mentor is good and all, but you won't find one easily.

If you want to be a doctor or an engineer, obviously you need a formal education. You wouldn't go to someone who has learned on wikipedia to treat your diseases.

But in the humanities, I'm not sure academia is that great.

>>12801466

>>12801479
Sure no actual answer, just an image. Why would i expect more from people here.
>>12801478
Any profession where you need some sort of documentation obviously requires you to go through academia. (law as well)
I would propose the idea of you creating something new with your knowledge attained. So you could study law and programming to create a softwear that could make documents that would otherwise have to be written every time.

Even for those sectors there are countless possibilities that exist.

>>12801539
If you want a hugbox go back to redd*t

>>12801549
Hugbox? I would love people with sub 100 iq to stay out of my thread, thank you. Also if you're younger than 20 fuck off.

>>12801559
cope :)

>>12801439
the only value of academia is access to expensive lab stuff
t. stem academic

>>12801478
quite honestly most doctors have a wikipedia tier understanding of physiology and pharmacology

>>12801439
>you look for what's interesting to you
>to you
This is the problem right here. There's nothing wrong with learning about things to satisfy a particular itch, but as you progress it becomes clear there is no reason whatsoever for you to go above and beyond and read things which challenge you to rethink your perspective, rather than merely reinforcing what you already find interesting. Teaching yourself is very much a one-track path towards knowledge, what is interesting to you may not necessarily be philosophically sound or even socially beneficial.

Also, the idea that a self-taught learner will get through the content twice as fast as a university student is not just wrong, it also sends out a terrible message that a reader can absorb the same amount of information in a more compressed time frame. Academic courses are paced in such a way that allows you to invest a healthy amount of time into all aspects of your study, rather than simply rushing onto the next big thing. What you're suggesting sounds like pure dilettantism

Academia gives you one precious gem of actual guidance accompanied by 500 pounds of fool's gold phony guidance that will lead you to spend 15 years posturing that you're a _____ expert while actually sucking ass at _____.

Going it alone and without support from academia is nearly impossible and you'll likely flounder and give up, or become ingrown and solipsistic even if you do stick with it. But being in academia has its own set of psychic poisons that you have to dodge and survive.

>>12801587
First person to understand, nice.
>>12801598
I agree, being closeminded is something that can be a result of learning alone. Though, i don't think that being enrolled in a university changes this a lot.
Take philosophy, once you have the basis you can choose philosophers which you want to specialize in.
The only thing that changes is that you have more possibility to reflect your thoughts.
I don't really get why you're putting social benefits into the equation.

Do you think you're not able to learn a subject to the extent of a graduate in one and a half years?
Dedication will be a prerequisite and obviously you can absorb the same amout of information. I would posit you could learn even more, just because you will be able to learn at the pace you desire and also will have the possiblity to look up whatever you disire at any point in time because you have the internet.
>Academic courses are paced in such a way that allows you to invest a healthy amount of time into all aspects of your study, rather than simply rushing onto the next big thing.
Why are you assuming that one would rush to the next big thing, you learn something until you understand it, not to get to the next part. That's what's fucked up with university as well, you can retake exams and still progress, letting you fall behind even more. This is such a bad argument.
Your view is so closeminded, you are taking the worst case of my senario and not even considering the system you are proposing to be better.

>>12801662
I agree, there are problems with learning alone, but i think if done right you have can achieve a lot more in a shorter amount of time.
Also the actual guidance is limited to good professors. If you're talking about the curriculum, sure if you can't do anything without being hand-fed.

I am not talking about becoming solipsistic like people on this board, people here are pretentious as fuck and have their own set of doubts.
I am talking about people who are interested in learning and life itself, who want to create. These people won't fall into solipsism because they gain meaning by doing what they enjoy.

>>12801466
>what did he mean by this?
>spend a day finding secondary materials, studying encyclopedias, find earlier source, find a copy of that, read that too
or
>what did he mean by this?
>ask prof and get all that info in a 15 min rundown

>>12801439

>>12802592
There's the problem again, you only ask for a certain opinion of a professor. The other way you have a broader understanding.

>>12802557
>you learn something until you understand it, not to get to the next part
And you're calling me close-minded? You think certain authors don't deserve more than maybe a couple of days consideration before you think you've 'understood' it? If you were to condense a standard three year course into a year and a half, you'd probably have even less time on each thinker or writer. On a three year english undergraduate, for example, I studied three primary texts a week and countless secondary material. But I'm not even going to pretend I fully understood a particular text by the end of a week, because part of the process of learning is to perpetually return to and draw from the things you already know. What you're suggesting is rushed, haphazard, and totally disrespectful of the writers and thinkers you want to learn about. You say you learn something until you understand it, but give yourself an arbitrary time frame of a year and a half to do it? Get fucked dude, that kind of contradictory logic will get you nowhere, let alone to a point of enlightenment. You'll have the most shallow appreciation for thinkers whose greatest works take years of rereading before their valuable secrets can be accessed.

>>12802699
Wow dude you're blowing my mind

>>12803015
Once again someone who gets shit on by people using esoteric language to conceil quite easy concepts.
Most of the stuff you read is pretty easy to understand once condensed. I would mostly go to the oxford series, where you don't have the first hand auther who wrote it in gibberish. This idea of having to go back is something that may be valid, but only if it's abstract. So that includes art, but anything with tangible logic doesn't have the need of referral at a later date.

The timeframe that i set is what i believe it would take to get to an undergraduade level. I am not saying you have to manage it in that time, or set that limit at all. I am positing that you will make it in that timeframe.

>>12803050
Good post.

>>12801439
The purpose of academia is so that we have public institutions dedicated to the advancement of human knowledge
Lefties are shitting them up these days but they're still necessary for society to progress.

>>12803108
It's stagnating quite a bit because we are currently going into more and more esoteric fields, which only reaffirm what we already believe.
We don't have enough collabs between the fields, we are stuck in the line that was walked already.
I agree that it is necessary for society to progress, but the way it's implemented right now it's a linear progress.
We need to rethink, deconstruct and reconstruct. And the way academia is set up is mostly for creating a living for people, rather than for progress.

>>12803074
>Most of the stuff you read is pretty easy to understand once condensed
anti-intellectualism is not a defensible intellectual position, and 'condensing' a difficult work inevitably takes the venom out of its bite. It's the kind of logic which drives De Boton to make videos talking about why Proust can change your life– totally redundant in the face of actually reading ISOLT.

>I would mostly go to the oxford series, where you don't have the first hand auther who wrote it in gibberish
this sentence is gibberish

>The timeframe that i set is what i believe it would take to get to an undergraduade level
Have you any experience of an undergraduate course? Because if not, then you have a total zero points of reference for how much progress you should be making. You've just arbitrarily plucked out a number that just so happens to be half the length of a conventional course. Your 'belief' that its a more appropriate length of time has no justification, its just what you passively assume you can achieve. Sorry, but I need a stronger guarantee than "i believe"

>>12803132
Not that anon, but most course curricula are available for free online, often with accompanying lecture videos/notes/assignments etc. That's usually enough to give you an idea of what an undergraduate course entails and how much progress you can make in a specified time period.

Furthermore, there's a lot of accumulated evidence in neuroscience and the science of pedagogy that says most learning actually occurs via "active learning", more specifically, the hierarchies established in pic related.

In humanities the higher levels are often addressed by having students write essays, but the pedagogical value of this exercise is diminished because the essays are assigned as tests. This automatically changes the focus from learning the material to "beating the test" or "getting the grade".

Regarding pacing, self-learning has the significant, almost overwhelming advantage of being able to modulate the pace. You cite that

>Academic courses are paced in such a way that allows you to invest a healthy amount of time into all aspects of your study, rather than simply rushing onto the next big thing.

But in fact, the opposite is true. Namely because most undergraduates are taking many other courses at the same time and their focus is divided. Focused study on one or two subjects (at a time) for an extended period is far more effective than scattered attention on a diversity of subjects. The material can also be learned more quickly and more deeply than in the alternative. The self-pacing ensures that one can take the time to understand the fundamental elements before being forced to move on to new topics, as is the case with a university course.

If the fear is illusory competence (which is a legitimate fear) then universities have no shortage of that either, in both humanities and STEM.

Probably the best system of higher education is the tutorial system employed by Britain's top colleges. I would say it is worth going to university if all unis were structure that way. Likewise if you plan to do any kind of research, as you'll need access to equipment, scientific journals, funding, etc. But otherwise, I think we live in an age where education can finally be democratized and improved far beyond what is possible in a university setting.

I also recommend everyone ITT to check out Sanjoy Mahajan's MIT course on Teaching Engineering and Science. It's an enlightening course, and it's scope goes far beyond its title.

Not exactly high academia but anyone moderately interested in bodybuilding will probably have more knowledge about muscular development and dieting than most gym professionals, and maybe even most doctors.
I doubt this expands to every other field of interest, but it's definitely true in this specific case. Bodybuilders are walking lab rats. Dorian Yates famously said he went to a doctor to ask him about how to quit steroids when he retired, and the doctor pretty much threw his hands up and said Dorian probably understood it better than him.

>>12803132
>Anti-intellectualism is not a defensible intellectual position, and 'condensing' a difficult work inevitably takes the venom out of its bite.

That is heavily dependent on the subject we are talking about. I was mostly refering to philosophical texts, which are written in an esoteric fashion, deliberatly complex. If we're talking about literature it is obvious you can't cut out parts.

>Have you any experience of an undergraduate course?
I am currently at my bachelor thesis.

>Sorry, but I need a stronger guarantee than "i believe"
When i say i believe it's mostly due to me thinking about how much i learnt when going to university and thinking about how much more i could have done in that timeframe.
The first 90% of the semester being laissez fair and the last 10% being a scrambling for most people.

>>12803293
Good summarization, i am quite bad at making arguments, mostly i just jump to the conclusions i draw.

>>12803326
Don't forget, you don't need top grades, nor do you need to know everything to have a dregree. Surface level knowledge is common with a lot of people.

>>12803108
>hates lefties
>wants progress

I don't get why do people even go to college?
They spend money and time to play "learn and forget" game for years, what do they expect? IMO unies should be ezclusively training facility for academics, if you want profession, you should take apprenticeship, if you just want knowledge be an autodidact. Many of my peers (including myself) just go to college to avoid military draft in my shithole.
t. freshman

Honestly, even top10 academic institutions have been a mixed bag in my experience, so I'd imagine the average one is pretty much worthless.

>>12803830
Your experience goes how far? Reading about them?
If you have the possibility to go to one of them you should, just because they set you up for life. The individual mentorship is vastly superior to other unis, don't dismiss that, also you have the opportunity to make really good connections.
>>12803479
I agree with the uni just being a scapegoat for people who don't know what to do, or avoid going in a certain direction.
I don't agree with the excusivity, apprenticeships should be revamped and shown to be equal in comparison to a degree.

>>12803479
>learn and forget
Universities do not condone cramming that's on the student if that's all he does

>>12802592
The first one is clearly the superior option. What's your point?

>>12806180
Sure if your time is worthless

>>12801539
>softwear
behold the learned autodidact

>>12801439
Are you ESL? You have misspellings in your posts and seem like you can barely form a coherent sentence in English.

>>12807641
>Are you ESL?
Yes, though i did take the proficency test from the cambridge institute and passed.
>seems like you can barely form a coherent sentence
That's a strech if you ask me.