/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16882198]

Can you get a university-level education just by reading books?

[Anonymous No.16882395]

no

[Anonymous No.16882401]

yes

[Anonymous No.16882404]

>>16882198
Yes but you need to do more work but the freedom is yours.

[Anonymous No.16882407]

>>16882198
maybe

[Anonymous No.16882465]

>>16882198
A university education doesn't mean much with the internet

[Anonymous No.16882536]

Obviously. Universities are basically access to a library and tutoring. A person can read the books on a philosophy syllabus at Cambridge and get the exact same knowledge as someone who took that course. The only difference is that the Cambridge student will have a professor to set him assignments and give him feedback on his work. That might seem like a lot, but how valuable is it actually? For example if there were a course on Plato, could the professor REALLY explain things better than the books, better than Plato himself and the various secondary sources on Plato? I doubt it. In the end, the only advantages the uni student has over the autodidact are as follows: (1) he is forced by the uni system to do the reading and the work, (2) he has a professor to clear up misconceptions and give feedback on assignments, (3) he has more time to spend on the subject than the autodidact, who presumably has to work and provide for himself, and (4) he has fellow students to talk with about the class and exchange ideas (this rarely happens and is rarely valuable)

[Anonymous No.16882550]

>>16882536
This and he has a degree. I'm a neet so I have free time and also I get more freedom but you have to do more digging to find what to study and to find a good discourse group.

[Anonymous No.16882552]

>>16882198
>university-level education
why would you want to brainwash yourself? a university education is something to be avoided unless you're going for STEM or premed. just read the canon and teach yourself a second language if you want a real education.

[Anonymous No.16882576]

>>16882198
in STEM: yes if you also do the exercises in those books, and i mean really do them, don't just look at the answers. You would also probably benefit from learning some technical skills to replace lab courses. Eg coding, machining, soldering, building circuits with bread boards, using multimeters and oscilloscopes, etc.

non-STEM: not sure, but I think so. You can read books critically and maybe submit ideas you have about them in online forums or discussions in place of writing essays. That should allow you to sythensize your ideas about what you read, and defend them.

[Anonymous No.16882580]

Absolutely yes. Especially with the internet, you can really go as far/deep into anything you want.
Anyone who denies this is a pseud.

[Anonymous No.16882624]

You can do much better, knowledge-wise.
A lot of the value around college is the networking and access to great tutors (if your discipline requires that). I'd be very mindful about not trying to go it completely alone.

[Anonymous No.16882640]

People will say yes, but as far as I know this never happened to any relevant thinker. Feel free to debunk me

[Anonymous No.16882647]

>>16882198
You can get a better one, uni is a huge fucking waste of time that teaches basic garbage in return for a paper that certifies you.

[Anonymous No.16882654]

>>16882198
Yes

[Anonymous No.16882655]

>>16882536
this. sensate anon.

[Anonymous No.16882658]

>>16882536
Reaching the point in the academic hierarchy where you get paid to do nothing but write and think is pretty valuable in theory, but no student gets there anymore without being really well-connected.
There's also the idea of being part of an academic community and having an audience of intelligent peers who can comment on or respond to your work. Autodidacts don't have something like this yet. Reading, writing, and studying on your own is easier than ever, but there's still too much gatekeeping around publishing.

[Anonymous No.16882684]

>>16882640
what if you dont give a shit about being famous/influential and just want access to attain a higher level education?

[Anonymous No.16882687]

>>16882640
Plato, Augustine, Aristotle had to revolt from the Academy. Schools are just for learning what is being taught w psuedo-openness

[Anonymous No.16882692]

>>16882198

most people on my course didnt even read half of what was set and still got first class degrees

unviersity is just getting a degree and socialising, outside of the highest echelons

[Anonymous No.16882720]

>>16882692
It's a business model which tries to capitalize on new branches it tries to invent without any universalizing of knowledge. It's just specialization for the sake of it and money.

[Anonymous No.16882723]

>>16882687
They all took part in their equivalent forms of academia. Plato got tutored by Socrates, and earlier than that he was part of anaxagorean and eraclitean circles; Aristotle grew up in an academia that was already istitutionalized; Augustine took part in regular academia during his studies in rethoric, and continued his philosophical studies in neoplatonic circles, from which he learnt the basics about the discipline.
Basically, none of the authors you've mentioned fit OP's scenario

[Anonymous No.16882737]

>>16882723
That implies anything is an education system which is fine but those listed are definitionally didactic

[Anonymous No.16882773]

>>16882640
Obviously because most intelligent people will naturally go to university, but it’s not the university which makes them great, it’s the knowledge they acquire which comes through books. Plus it is only recently that we have such a great store of information and books through the internet.

[Anonymous No.16882800]

>>16882737
What? Rephrase your post please
>>16882773
It is stil, weird that there are no exception of the rules. Frankly I'm not so convinced that books are enough: what is also needed is someone who teaches you to read effectively scademic books. It is certainly concievable that someone could learn how to do it unaided, but so far I have literally found no proof of this having ever happened. All the great philosophers in history had a teacher, apparently

[Anonymous No.16882821]

>>16882800
>All the great philosophers in history had a teacher, apparently
Wow, he just btfo lit/. Kek

[Anonymous No.16882881]

>>16882198
Maybe, but most people lack the discipline and even the desire to do that kind of work

[Anonymous No.16883047]

>>16882198
Sure, if you do the exercises and give yourself honest feedback.

[Anonymous No.16883063]

>read book
>write essay about it and post to lit
The criticism is probably worth more than whatever half assed drunken depressed professor has to say.

[Anonymous No.16883083]

people saying no or maybe are literally just coping with the fact they fell for the biggest scam in existence. you'll never be a tenured professor.

[Anonymous No.16883187]

>>16882198
With free videos and websites to help you along the way, yes.
>>16882640
They wouldn’t be able to become very popular without academia as a launching point. All I can think of is Debord but he became famous for different reasons (though I would say now is the perfect to pin yourself to a political movement for intellectual credit).

[Anonymous No.16883208]

Yes, roll

[Anonymous No.16883209]

Of course it is, but it doesn't get you anywhere. College educated people have a special sort of distain for the ernest autodidact because they are a direct challenge to the monopoly on status and economic opportunities that they justify for themselves through a belief in their own superiority. If you want to be ridiculed and die in poverty, by all means, produce another tomb on ancient technology or the metaphysical secrets of Plato. You'll never get published for it. Enjoy watching your peers fly up the career latter with inane bullshit like "Race and Gender in Victorian Cabernet" while your Rousseauian critique of modernity is used as toilet paper the moment whatever publisher you send it to scans your resume and sees two semesters at community college and a year of teaching yourself attic greek

[Anonymous No.16883232]

ye, Alexander Pope dropped out of formal schooling at 12 and, although he did get rudimentary knowledge of Latin and ancient Greek from that, he was mostly self educated by reading in his family's library or his rich friends' libraries. All things considered, he did have genius level iq.

[Anonymous No.16883238]

>>16883209
>>>16883187
Enjoy watching your peers fly up the career latter with inane bullshit like "Race and Gender in Victorian Cabernet" while your Rousseauian critique of modernity is used as toilet paper the moment whatever publisher you send it to scans your resume and sees two semesters at community college and a year of teaching yourself attic greek

[Anonymous No.16883248]

>>16883238
Whoops

[Anonymous No.16883265]

severely based video from a based viet cong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_UJw3PO4CY

[Anonymous No.16883272]

>>16883209
Quite possibly the biggest cope I've ever seen. More and more autodidacts are getting published. Employers are learning just how much of a scam college is, and how dumb the kids applying are.

[Anonymous No.16883278]

>>16882536
>he has fellow students to talk with
the two months i spent in uni i didn't talk to a soul
but now i can partake in the truly high-intellect discourse of /lit/

[Anonymous No.16883282]

Considering that most university courses just hand-hold you through a textbook, yes. Depends on your work ethic though. I know that I personally probably wouldn't have learned as much if I was left to my own devices. Tests are a good fire under your ass to get you motivated to learn, as painful as that process can be

[Anonymous No.16883294]

literally just win some short story or essay awards, you talentless nerds.

[Anonymous No.16883381]

>>16883272
I can't even access most academic journals without an .edu email, how the fuck am I going to get published?

Of course there are outsiders, but the basic career route of getting hired in a lab to do research, getting published in a couple local papers, networking with bigwigs at fancy dinners, writing summeries for a thinktank, etc. are all out of the question.

Short of charging headfirst into a war-zone or building your own company from the ground up (and good luck getting funding for that) there isn't much you can do to satiate that wild desire for power and prestige that keeps you up all night staring at the ceiling.

Of course, most college students don't do anything with their lives either. I've worked plenty of office jobs with people ten years my senior and fancy master degrees so I know that didn't do shit for them or they didn't do shit with it but you're either insane or college educated if you think people don't look down their nose at you the moment they hear 'autodidact'.

[Anonymous No.16883395]

>>16883381
Arxiv, there are a ton, scihub for papers

[Anonymous No.16883423]

>>16882198
HYPOTHETICALLY, yes.
IN PRACTICE, absolutely not likely. The main reason this is the case is that to learn topics really well, like academic research level of well, you need to be 'in the know' on the literature which professors know and teach their students. Unless you get access to their syllabi, it's really hard to recreate proper university learning on your own, because you won't know where to start. You might think you do, but that's because you're thinking of introductory classes for an undergraduate major. To replicate knowledge of more advanced undergrad major classes or anything grad school-level you really do need lucky guidance from people in-the-know. Maybe this could change, if technical terminology was easier to find online.

[Anonymous No.16883445]

>>16883272
>More and more autodidacts are getting published.
Name 'em.

[Anonymous No.16883491]

>>16883423
>people-in-the-know
>you might think
>use of the pronoun you

Get this sales bullshit outta here, shill. College is for fucking idiots who will happily take out loans to line the pockets of the admins and tenured. It's a business. Either you're a paid shill, or you're doing some Olympian-level mental gymnastics to justify why you spent all that money and time.
You can literally find course syllabi online. People with PhDs will have to resort to offering their teaching online. Imagine all the graduates who will freelance in the future? Most of your tuition was just to pay for the stupid, useless hotel-like amenities that most colleges have now. COVID has set a precedent. Why pay so much extra for stuff you don't need?

[Anonymous No.16883501]

>>16883445
Me. I'm an autodidactic polymath.

[Anonymous No.16883523]

>>16883491
well, you might happen to live in a country where it's reasonably priced per semester

[Anonymous No.16883546]

>>16883523
Not him but it could be free w no effect on economy and that still has issues in bias and institutionalism. I get a big kick that Hungary banned lgbt studies and the university didn't, through all their fields, tools and studies. They don't even allow real conversations on it outside political opinions. It's a failure and a joke besides the prestige in having a degree which it is starting to lose.

[Anonymous No.16883578]

>>16883282
Literally just read the book and answer the questions. You can find exams from as soon as a year ago online.
Coding bootcamp structures are going to become the norm for lower priced accreditation.

[Anonymous No.16883737]

>>16883546
Yeah same thing is happening in Canada. it doesn't cost an absurd amount to get your Arts degree here, and it still has utility in the job market, but as far as prestige goes it's getting besmirched every year

[Anonymous No.16883796]

>>16882640
Machado de Assis is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest brazilian author and he never attended an university. He was poor as fuck too.

[Anonymous No.16883839]

>mfw i just started freelancing right away and now make over 80k a year

[Anonymous No.16884023]

>>16883737
better start learning to suck dick now

[Anonymous No.16884110]

>>16883839
What do you do, may I ask?

[Anonymous No.16884224]

Universities are good at providing structure so learning can happen. If you are asking me can you learn all you need to without going to a university? Absolutely. Will you need to self discipline yourself to really study and understand the material? Absolutely. If the end pursuit is simply knowledge then yes I genuinely think you can learn as much without a degree. A lot of people can't or won't be able to do that without the structure in place to make them do that. Also without a degree or experience your knowledge is generally useless in the outside world. Unless you're going for self employment or even just self enrichment then you'll want that piece of paper.

[Anonymous No.16884244]

>>16882198
If you are actually able to understand them. Universities do so much tutoring and grading to judge whether or not you are actually managing that.
Of course, some fields are more obscurantist than others, which would complicate the matter.

[Anonymous No.16884484]

>>16884023
no thanks, faggot

[Anonymous No.16884524]

these days you can find most of your questions basically answered on google or various forums, personally I think it can be done

When I was an undergraduate, most of the best students were the ones who barely came to class and spent their time reading the book and solving problems (STEM majors). A lot of the people who were in class were dozing off and a lot cheated on their homework because they were lazy.

I think being in university helps if you're motivated and have access to professors who give you opportunities to expand your knowledge beyond the classroom. But I think anyone with access to books and the internet, who is motivated, can get to the point where they can publish articles in any field.

[Anonymous No.16884932]

>>16882198
A university education is reading books a professor just makes sure you read the right ones, tests you on it and explains it to you if you don't understand. If you understand, test yourself and read the right ones you have a university education. Most of the learning is done by yourself in anyways.

[Anonymous No.16885456]

>>16882536

It's far easier to learn a subject comprehensively if you have someone to highlight the really important bits and help avoid the common pitfalls. It also keeps you accountable.

[Anonymous No.16885549]

>>16882640
The internet became popular like 20 years ago and the people who grew up on it aren't even 30 yet.