/sci/ - Science & Math

i got my library card for free

>PAYING for a library card

jesus what is this, 380 BC?

>got pretty heated

Ask them to turn on the air conditioning. It will make it cooler in there.

While you may be able to learn things at your own pace while studying on your own, you don't necessarily have the benefit of having other individuals that are also taking that curriculum to discuss the curriculum with. Some may find either method to be more effective; different learning styles and all. Apples and oranges and whatnot. The people in your class just sound like they're more interested in their own right-ness than the connotations of each learning method.

>>2963471
But, in theory, I could have learned everything about Chemistry from Avogradro's number to the photoeletric effect from simply reading my textbook & following along, yes?

What kind of fucked up dystopia makes it's future doctors/scientists/engineers pay $30000 just for 2 years of college?

Yes. Unis are more important socially than academically. But although you can learn just as well by yourself you wont get any references and you don't get that magical piece of paper, in short you can't get a job in your field without going to uni. If science jobs ever have a trial period and their own tests then unis will disappear within a decade. Also
>Paying to take books out of a library

Anyone who thinks that you can learn as efficiently in isolation is a fool. We're a social species and competition is great for education.

I think both a library card and a college education should be completely free, however.

>>2963484

Sure, but without practical lab experience all that knowledge is pretty much worthless.

>>2963484
In theory, yeah, that's certainly possible. However, that's not going to earn you a slip of paper that says "Yes, I have learned [insert subject]" which you would show to your possible employers.

>>2963496
Has NOTHING to do with getting a job. I'm simply asking about acquiring the knowledge.

Think Good Will Hunting, bro.

Most people don't go to a university for an education. They go for a piece of paper.

>>2963500
Newton did it. Why can't I?

The facts?

Yes you can learn everything you would learn in a university by venturing into a public library. (assuming the library is stocked with quality books)

The reality? Most people WONT do that. They dont have the diligence to go into the library, read books of increasing difficulty on various subjects, find and complete practice problems, take notes, and test themselves without the benefit of college. The whole college environment is conducive to learning (and getting fucked up, but thats besides the point.)

The conclusion: Yes, it is theoretically possible.

If you could get an equal education depends on YOU. It depends if you truly have the diligence.

Note that we're talking about knowledge in the strictest sense, so i threw out the fact that in a library you wont have access to a lab. I also assumed the 'knowledge' you get in college was limited to knowledge in the academic sense, so i didnt talk about increasing skills interacting with people or any of the soft benefits. Like fucking.

yes, you can get a university-level education from books you borrowed/pirated. but it's definitely harder, and won't get you any social advancement. certainly, autodidacticism is the path to go if you are cheap and simply want to learn for the sake of learning

>>2963538
So it's settled then. The answer is basically yes.

Thanks, guys. =]

>>2963525
this

>>2963549

no

Education is not simply the unstructured accumulation of facts.

>>2963519
Barring a diploma, universities offer a service, and that service is an environment that is designed for learning. If it's a scientific field you're looking into, the university would also provide needed equipment and materials which you may not have access to/cannot afford on your own. A paid-for education can offer you some things that [free] autodidactism cannot.

The thing being missed is experience. Book knowledge can be made into something more by a professor with life experience. Only arrogant twats think they can learn anything they want by reading a book. Of course this assumes your professor is smart and experienced...and not all are. But many are and can teach you better than you can teach yourself.

ITT: people still don't understand what op was asking.

op was not asking about the experience of college, obtaining a degree, or partying.

just simply the acquiring of knowledge.

what dont you people get

>Do you think it is possible to have learned everything you've learned from your college education on a $1.50 library card?

Absolutely not. .

>>2963596

Its op's fault for having a 'tl:dr' that had little to do with his actual question

>>2963443

>"So, now I'm asking you. Do you think it is possible to have learned everything you've learned from your college education on a $1.50 library card?

tl;dr - $1.50 library card = $30,000 college tuition?""

Question 1) answer is yes

Question 2) (aka tl:dr) is still a compelling one.

Acquire the knowledge? Potentially yeah. But the point of university, aside from some education, is to get a piece of paper saying you jumped through the hoops. You can't get that from the library.

>>2963443
Static learning is possible, but most people need methods of reinforcement and entrainment. If learning was as simple as a couple of text books, schools wouldn't be integrated into 1/4 of our lives, if not 1/3.

Actually, you could do it all for free on the internet. But then you'd have no credentials and it'd be near worthless.

College is just expensive daycare that shows prospective employers you can sit in one spot for three years and follow arbitrary deadlines and authority.

So, yes, you could be an autodidact. Or you could get qualifications.

Not for any major that actually requires some in depth learning. I'm a math major and I'm sure I could have reasonably taught myself calc ii-iv took AP in HS and possibly linear algebra but to actually understand something like Analysis or Abstract Algebra and certainly anything higher than that the average math major at a state university is going to need someone to explain it to him and difficult exams to encourage studying.

If it was a History degree that would be a lot more debatable, all you would really need would like minded people to discuss the material with and a list of books to get through in a certain amount of time. As far as papers go just keep an in depth blog about books you've read.

>>2963651

You too can be an autodidact and still be in your mom's basement at 40 arguing how much smarter you are than people who went to college.

Yes i think so. If you have the will power to actually stay there and study, even if there are no finals, then i think you can learn much more and much faster from a library. Maybe the only difference is hat you can't ask the professor to clarify some topic, but i used their help very little in university, and it was not that useful.
In fact i didn't want to go to university. I wanted to study by myself on books, videos, internet, going to some university classes but without being enrolled... but my parents wanted me to get the stupid piece of paper.

The only thing is that it's hard to know beforehand what knowledge you'll need in the future, so i suggest following some university program anyway.
You have the advantage that you can skip stuff you think is useless and stupid, but that is also a disadvantage, because maybe that stuff would have turned out useful.

>>2963672

I thought I was arguing FOR college in that post. I just hold no illusions as to what prospective employers want to know about their prospective employees.

>Paying to learn
>2011
facepalmcollage.png

>mfw when fags think students need to be guided through knowledge
>then who discovered it

>>2963690

>mfw he thinks everyone should have to build the entire body of human knowledge from first principles by themselves

>>2963703
>my face when that's exactly what i did

>>2963443
Sounds like the people who insist it's absolutely impossible to learn as much from autodidactism are the types who also never question the knowledge spoon-fed to them by their professors. Professors are not all-knowing and infallible gods of knowledge. Ones that I've seen myself are either just regurgitating rhetoric or they're partially right.

Personally, I've found that I already have a college education. My friends take various math, science, psychology, English, history, etc courses and I tend to be able to help them with their homework on the spot. Things the struggle to learn in class from their professors are things I already knew just from researching.

>"Do not let school get in the way of your education"

I didn't go to a single economics class that had lectures when I was in college. I showed up for the first few to get the test/quiz schedule, showed up for tests and quizzes, and then derped around at my apartment for the rest of the time.

Read my textbook, watched the occasional free lecture from Yale, passed every class with at least a B.

You go to college for a degree, not an education.

>>2963715
The reality is most people need other peoples reinforcement to retain knowledge.

This is likely an affect of culture, in that knowledge not used regularly is either ignored or easily forgotten.

In the end, few people will learn, retain and ably use most static knowledge.

>>2963645
This generation just pisses me the fuck off terribly with attitudes like this. What the hell ever happened to the human spirit of learning for knowledge's sake? Apparently everything has to make you money and prove yourself to others to be "worth" something these days.

I find it doubly interesting that a 4 year degree takes an average of 6 years to complete and in the modern day is worth only a 2-year degree. Sounds like a bunch of people clinging to fallacious traditions of the past.

You certainly do not need a professor to learn, but you need a college education to get you a good job.

Sure I could have learned chemical engineering reading perry's handbook. But then I wouldn't have that piece of paper that allows me to get a job.

>>2963734
Mark Twain.

>>2963739
This. I've watched Game Theory and Economics lectures FROM Yale and other various sources. I have a very good grasp on the subject and yet no credentials. And that doesn't stop my knowledge from being useful

>>2963742
*effect

>>2963443
most likely not. i would not have access to $5000 polarizing microscopes, x-ray diffractometers, and euhedral minerals and exceptional rock samples.

>>2963746
My grandfather was an electrical engineer, had no education past middle school, and still had a constant job doing what he knew and loved. He could learn anything. This isn't even an isolated incident. Tons of people get supposedly college-only jobs without a degree or certification of any kind. Experience goes a lot farther. When you show up and can do the work well, that's all that matters.

>>2963759
You can reserve free access to equipment even if you don't go to a university. And if equipment makes your whole education, I have bad news for you.

>>2963743
Which is why I'm taking a fuck ton of AP credits in high school and graduating in 3 years with a minor unrelated but understandable to my major. (math major, econ minor)

>>2963768
>Implying the job market has not changed since grandfathers time

Ok, so what we've established is that, indeed, you can get a shitty education from the library much cheaper than you can get shitty education from a University.

If you're actually prepared to take advantage of your opportunities, though, you'll need something more than sitting alone in your basement convincing yourself that you've got it all figured out.

>>2963743
Maybe it's just that this generation discovered that a lot of work is collaborative now, so being a shut-in autodidact is only useful if smug self-satisfaction is your main goal in life. If so, I've got this great Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe to sell you...

>>2963758
>affect

4.
Psychology . feeling or emotion.
5.
Psychiatry . an expressed or observed emotional response: Restricted, flat, or blunted affect may be a symptom of mental illness, especially schizophrenia.

>>2963782
So you're telling me that in only 10 years (that's the last time he was alive and working), you SUDDENLY need a degree to be an electrical engineer? Howabout you peddle your bullshit to someone else because I'm not buying.

10 years ago, college degrees were MORE valuable than they are today.

>>2963443
>$30,000 college tuition

Shit like this is why I am glad I don't live in the US anymore

And while you can learn just from reading books, there is stuff that no textbook will teach you. Not to mention that you will have no proof of your education, company's will always choose to hire a person with a university degree over someone who doesn't.

>>2963792
>No idea when to use effect and affect
Oh man, just stop trying. We're all embarrassed for you.

>>2963768
You're trying to tell me today you can land your first job in engineering without a college education. Are you actually insane?

>>2963774
so you're saying that actually using the equipment and going through the processes outlined in a book is a negative thing? cause honestly, a book can talk about how the light propagates through a crystalline structure and why, but it's a lot easier and more useful to the learning process to actually see it, to take the interference figures and determine the birefrigence of a mineral, to gather the samples in the field, prep them properly in a pulverizer, level them in the tray, and then identify the minerals by searching through the xrd databases, etc. reading only gets you so far in some subjects without actually having the equipment on hand. science is not a passive thing. if you think science is passive, i've got bad news for you.

>>2963812
hows it feel to fail when theres more than one right answer?

>>2963822
No I'm not saying that, way to go off on something I didn't say.

I'm going with the Library Card.

You guys want to be autodidacts? You guys want to learn all on your own? It's motherfucking possible, you just need FOCUS. Even world-renowned universities realize this such as Yale, who are now offering free videos of their lectures & MIT who put all course materials online.

Check this out.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/

You can learn fucking anything from Pharmacology to Engineering to Philosophy to Neuroscience.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/04/the-phd-problem-what-do-you-do-with-too-many-doctorates..
ars
To whoever brought up the degrees.

>>2963841
>mfw the argument is about learning things and someone didn't learn the 4th entry in the dictionary

>>2963852
>Doesn't realize how much university lab work contributes to the a degree

While you can "learn" the stuff, there is a difference between knowing and understanding, and for a science or engineering degree most of that difference is the lab work that you do

>>2963852
nah, they just want the belief that they could, so they can justify not doing it.

If you break their belief, they'll repel into a pit of dispair. Its an affect of their personality.

It takes a fairly high base line of intelligence to becomes an autodidact. There are examples on both sides. You have Eric Hoffer on one hand and a bunch of intelligent designers on the other. You not only have to stay focused, but keep a balance to what you teach yourself. I would suggest an advisor to look at list of books and subjects and make suggestion to give a balanced view.

>>2963891
IT'S ABOUT THE ACQUISITION OF THE KNOWLEDGE ITSELF, NOT DOING THE LABS, HOLY FUCK, TRY ACTUALLY READING THE ORIGINAL POST YOU DUMB FUCKTARD

Sure you can, for certain subjects like maths, provided you have ridiculous self motivation. Even then it will probably take you three times as long.

Bottom line is, at Uni you are surrounded by people who have done it all before, and therefore know the best ways to instill knowledge in the minimum amount of time.

If your doing something like architecture, forget it. You end up learning more from the various ideas of your peers than from your teachers. You need to see how ideas grow and develop over time, which ones work out, which ones flop, who likes what ideas, how to speak in front of people, how to convey different concepts to different people.

Not to bag on self learning, but the HURR THEY JUS WAN OUR JEW GOLD mentality is for the most part exaggerated.

It tends to be more true in america particularly for things like graphic design because you fags have turned education into a pure money making endeavor which encourages degree mills.

>>2963443

for my philosophy degree- yes i could have done it all for free-

for my econ degree- not so much, we use a lot of computer aided modelling for statistical/econometric work....and i like being able to ask questions and get help on math

i think the argument works for Humanities courses, that just require focused reading. But for science/engineering...not really

I will say this: a college education is not 20,000 times better than a self-education on a library card or for goodness' sake a computer.

>>2963917
OP said "learning", half of learning is understanding

Without understanding, knowledge is useless, because unless you understand something you cannot apply it effectively (or even at all)

>>2963917
I'm pretty sure its about the application of knowledge.

Mere acquisition only means you have a dictionary level of knowledge.

>which obviously fails certain pedantic retards with no specialized knowledge. Certainly, they have affective personality disorders.

>>2963917

Students and scholars of all kinds and of every age aim, as a rule, only at information, not insight. They make it a point of honour to have information about everything, every stone, plant, battle, or experiment and about all books, collectively and individually. It never occurs to them that information is merely a means to insight, but in itself is of little or no value. On the other hand, a philosophical mind is characterized by the way in which it thinks. With the impressive erudition of those great pundits, I sometimes say to myself: ‘Ah, how little they must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much!’

Sure, you can acquire the same knowledge, but it is harder to do without guidance.

> because you can become a professional engineer without a bachelors degree

... oh wait

being an autodictate will lessen ignorance, an education will promote excellence

>>2963987
I dunno why, but I read that in a specific, english voice.

who dat?

>>2963703
>>>/b/

The knowledge has already been discovered, students don't need their hands held to learn it the hard part is already over.

>>2964069
the hard part was finding a way to justify not spending 12 hours in the field during harvest season.

>>2964069
This this & this. Just motherfucking this.

Knowledge and education must be done on your own regardless of whether or not you go to college.

Whether you're in the library or in a classroom, you still have to read, understand the material, and test yourself.

If anything, a university is a poor place to do this because they inflate grades and never force the student to understand the material, only memorize certain things for tests.

You do not need a guide or teacher. Virtually all textbooks are designed to introduce concepts in increasing difficulty. Teachers are also required to teach from the book, they may add a little variety and their personal experience, but there is still little deviation from the course book.

If you are in a math or science field, then you don't need the "opinions" of others and there are no benefits to group work. In science and math, it's either right or wrong. Only humanities and social sciences benefit from that.

In my experience it depends on the professor. I think it may be POSSIBLE to learn a lot of the same stuff I learn (in lecture classes, anyway) from textbooks alone, but it's infinitely easier with a good teacher. Even a mediocre one. Of course, occasionally you get those teachers where you really have to learn it all from the book. I've been successful in doing that, but it made my life a lot harder than it needed to be.

Of course, for us in the sciences there's also the laboratory time and education which you flat out cannot get from a book. Even if you had access to a lab, some things you just really have to be shown how to do. Like making good KBr pellets for IR, it would be very difficult and inefficient to learn how to do that without someone to teach you. You could make like 5 billion of the same compound until you learned the exact right ratio and technique, but you also need to use more or less compound for different compounds. It's surprisingly tricky, but nonetheless an essential skill in any chemistry lab.

Also, you get feedback on how your work is progressing, which is very important to ANY education. Sure, in the sciences, up to a point you can just plug and chug and give all the quantitative answers you need, but when it comes to explaining WHY something happens, conceptually, you need someone who knows the material better to tell you if you're on the right track.

How fucked would we be if we could not teach ourselves. People think they need educators because they were conditioned to have educators.

>>2964150
very fucked up would it be

>>2963443
>tl;dr - $1.50 library card = $30,000 college tuition?
Maybe given a shitton of time. I find that proper education greatly diminishes the time required to learn.

You can certainly teach yourself. The big risk with that is that you may spend all that time thinking you learned and understood something and then realized that you didn't really grasp the concept at all. That's what teachers are supposed to be there. To make sure you actually understand what the book is saying.

Depends what you study in university?
For the most part, I'd think it's possible to teach yourself instead of wasting money on going to university. Though I wouldn't think that anyone could do it - you'd need to be ambitious, have some idea of what you need to learn etc. and even then you'd only be able to do it if you talk to other people with knowledge of what you're studying and get some real life experience.

So, learning only from books = possible but improbable; it's only memorising theory.

I would love to have gone to a place where
>$1.50 library card = $30,000 college tuition wasn't true
I guess I should have chosen a better one
Too late now, or is it

ITT: introverts and extroverts can't understand each other, and thus must be wrong.

as a student of biochemistry: yes, disregarding those classes in which a lab is provided you could easily learn the material, likely better, alone. I say this because many of my professors are chinese or foreign and teaching while doing research, so their lectures are a worse resource than any book written in plain english.

depends on your course though, I took a couple of programming courses, and those definitely benefit from being able to interact with people. Sometimes the damn things just don't fucking work with 4 people trying to find out why the fucking thing segmentation faults.

seriously though, fuck asian teachers, especially those who don't assign a textbook or give decent notes. Your speech is not as good as you think it is Hong Wang.

>>2964840

you stupid? The fact that the teachers space out their lectures make it much longer to learn than you could do on your own.

I learn my entire year in 3 weeks at the beginning of the course through reading in the textbook. All I learn from lectures is what they emphasize is going to be on the test.
Side note: anybody find that female professors give easier tests? I notice a trend in that.

>>2963671
>but to actually understand something like Analysis or Abstract Algebra and certainly anything higher than that the average math major at a state university is going to need someone to explain it to him

Too bad I'm not an auditory learner most of the population.

You are just trying to justify spending so much money on something so easy to self-teach.

Sometimes learning on your own can be a lot quicker than going to university.

At university, you spend a lot of your time simply socializing, procrastinating, joining student organizations, playing sports, etc.

Imagine if instead, you went to the library everyday and spent 8 hours doing nothing but studying.

4-5 year education now only takes a year, at most.

Seriously, you can teach yourself both General Chemistry & Biology I & II in 2 - 3 months instead of a full school calendar year, like it takes.

& quite frankly, I haven't learned THAT much from doing simple labs. If I did, it's nothing I couldn't have youtube'd and gotten a quick demonstration of.

>Live in Finland
0 € library card = 0 € college tuition
Feels good

>>2963919
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism#Autodidactism_in_Architecture

you're wrong

>>2965518
like most*

>>2965525
learning it on your own would take MUCH longer
i feel like the real advantage of the professor is that they tell what is actually important.
at the end of any given course we rarely use more then 30% of the book
if you tried to go through and pick out what sections are important on your own you would definitely miss something
i know for my major some of my books would take me more then hours a day for the whole semester to finish(and learn properly) an i would come away with so much extraneous material it would be ridiculous
textbooks are built to be teaching aids not teachers, that's how they are written these days

>>2965559
What did you major in?

>>2965565
engineering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Armadillo_Aerospace

Problem?

Well to be a Chartered Engineer in the UK you need a Masters degree...so definitely the University education is worth more.

>>2963443
$1.50 library card or $1.50 library card and $0 tuition and cheapest accommodation (student dorms) available in awesome city

free education, fuck yeah

>tl;dr - $1.50 library card = $30,000 college tuition?

YES. WITHOUT A DOUBT. with the internet, MIT open course ware, KhanAcademy, a good library, and course descriptions/required textbooks for those courses, you most definetly could learn everything on your own.

the only exception would be a subject which requires million dollar equipment to actually learn, like molecular biology, or nanotechnolgy where you need electron microscopes or something.

however, if you lived near a university you could problaby sneak in the labs and learn from graduate students and stuff like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Pitts

>Walter Pitts was born in Detroit. Michigan on April 23, 1923, the son of Walter and Marie (née Welsia). He was an autodidact who taught himself logic and mathematics and was able to read a number of languages including Greek and Latin. At the age of 12 he spent three days in a library reading Principia Mathematica and sent a letter to Bertrand Russell pointing out what he considered serious problems with the first half of the first volume. Russell was appreciative and invited him to study in the United Kingdom. Although this offer was not taken up, Pitts decided to become a logician.

In theory yes completely but it would be completely for your own pleasure as you can't just say you completed the equivalent of university. It would also probably take quite a long time and you will only be learning from the perspective of yourself and the author of the book rather than yourself, author, professor, other students. Which greatly increase the true amount of knowledge you gain.

>>2965595
Or you could somehow steal the equipment

>electron microscopes

http://hackaday.com/2011/03/23/diy-scanning-electron-microscope/

>>2965600
well if you built your own electron microscope, you would know more about electron microscopes than 98% of the people who use them

>>2965606
I wonder if you could build your own MRI scanner.

>self study chemistry
>any psychedelic or bomb i want

I think the really important question we are all over-looking is: Does anyone have more / higher res of the library in OP?

>>2965595
the real question is why go to all that effort if you aren't getting a diploma?

>>2965628
exactly. you can, but without the disipline and social incentives of a university, you wont, unless you are a child prodigy like jacob barnett

>>2965525

Generally when people say that you can't make up for experience in lab, they're probably not talking about a lower level lab course, which are always just a joke.

Knowing how to do something theoretically is very different from having practical experience doing it. Even if you've read all the most authoritative books on the subjects and watched a number of videos on the techniques you're using, you're still not going to have the troubleshooting ability that comes from experience, nor the benefit of learning from the experience of professors and grad students. I'll also say that at least in chemistry, procedures for reactions included in even the best books are generally lacking in fine details, and there are also a lot of steps in reactions that extremely common, but never covered in any lab manual. Like in the nitration of aromatic compounds. I have a lab manual that tells me that I should do a microscale nitration (approx. 1g) in five minutes at 45 degrees with a reflux condenser attached. Now, if you actually do that in a lab, there's a damn good chance that you're gonna end up with an oily mixture of starting material, mono-, and polynitrated product. If you have any deactivating groups on the ring at all you need to carry out the reaction for at least 15 minutes, and you'll want to do it at a lower temperature to improve selectivity, since even if you do get mostly product, having too many different products in a mixture can cause them to goo-ify, making extraction a bitch. Which are all things I know from experience, and while they're all based on knowledge of theory, I still wouldn't currently be able to perform those procedures successfully if I hadn't had experience doing them in the lab.

>>2964018
> being an autodictate will lessen ignorance, an education will promote excellence
What?

> being an autodictate
> being […] an education

You're too stupid to talk about education. Tell me which type of “education” you had so that I know to keep people I like away from it. Can’t be school, college, university, or autodidactic education.

Did you bang your head against a rock until you felt that you were smart?

when you pay your tuition fees, you're really just paying for subscription to science/academic journals. That is all.

You don't get a qualification from learning on your own.

>>2965664
if this is true i'm going to be so pissed

>>2965656
>chemistry
so much memorization
no fun allowed

>>2965656

Also, electrophilic aromatic substitutions often involve dumping the reaction mixture onto ice and them filtrating to collect solid product, which is a problem when the volume of ice is greater than the volume of your buchner funnel (which is to say, always). Most ways of preventing the ice from going into the funnel will also cost you product, and melting the ice is not always a viable option if you are dealing with a sufficiently low melting solid, but there are a few tricks you can use (like, if you're feeling wasteful, you can always just do an extraction with a few portions organic solvent and extract it with a pasteur pipette before doing the sep funnel thing proper to eliminate most of the water you pick up and using a drying agent before rotovapping) that you can use if you need to. Also making good NMR samples of products from your reaction often requires some trickery.

I could do this for days, so I'll shut up now.

>>2965672
Well in reality you're paying university lecturer's wages and small costs of print outs and things that the university provides you with.

But my time at university has shown me that the majority of your learning comes from your own time. The lecturer just opens the door, introduces the subject and it's down to you. So in many ways university education relies heavily on autodidactism except it's autodidactism interspersed with a few structured tests at the end of each year.

But then again, maybe this is just my experience. and I probably didn't take full advantage of all the help offered at university. Not because I was crazy getting high or drunk every night. Just because I;m not a very social person.

Any chance that you are basing this off Good Will Hunting...

>>2965675

I never understood the complaint about memorization. You need to memorize a few basic principles, but most important information can be worked out from those principles if you know what you're doing. Reactions all pretty much operate on the same principles, and while you need to know a lot of different ways of controlling reactions to get really clever with it, similar things can be said of bio or experimental physics. Most of the stuff in chemistry that involves memorization is stupid nomenclature stuff which is just a necessary evil so we can all know what the hell everyone else is talking about. Synthetic chemists also tend to memorize a lot of reactions, but outside of organic chem that isn't super common.

Also, I'm sorry you had shitty teachers that made it boring. Chemistry should be fun, as if you apply the knowledge you learn to do some REALLY crazy shit.

The answer is yes, you can. With a good selection of books and journals, with the internet for feedback, with a bright, curious mind, anything is possible. Learning through the library has an advantage that the student learns at his own pace and can better comprehend the issues. However, school testing is also for performance for employment. And a degree .. for employment. So the library learner will understand subjects better because of their self-initiative and motivation, but will not be employable. Does that make sense? No, but that's the way it is.

>>2965737
>Teach self physics.
>No qualifications
>talk to qualified physicists
>show off
>get involved in their work

or
>start own business
>tutoring etc

>>2963743
Might it be the fact that learning for learnings sake gets you no where these days (at least in the us)?
Have you seen the kids of today? In their K-12 years they are pushed and pulled and drilled and told that without a college education they will be worthless, they will be nothing, that without they are less than the dirt they stand on.

These kids are going through bullshit that me and you never had to go through. Its really no fucking wonder most of them are so stressed out what with the competition to get a good scholarship.

Why does this generation not want to learn for knowledges sake? Quite simply because it is being beaten into their heads that without getting that piece of paper they will be worthless.

>>2965751
>rely on charity of employed scientists for work
>teach, because those who can't do, teach.

>>2965772
Those who CAN, get PhDs and teach as professors. The rest do.

YFW you need a PhD to be a professor. You need to be an expert and a true authority to be a professor. You need to continually stay up to date, and continually publish work. If you don’t and you allow yourself to coast, you get fired. And that is a good thing.

Engineers don’t need to stay up to date to stay employed. Fucking engineers.

>>2965772
>teach, because those who can't do, teach.

this is the most bullshit aphorism ever uttered. Human civilization is based on a history of teaching and learning.

it should be more like: those who teach are the ones making the most significant contributions to society.

>>2965812
>Those who teach get teen sex

I love how all these kids think they are Will Hunting, who was basically Einstein with child abuse issues. Could you learn all this shit in a library? Yes, but much more slowly because you don't know whats important to learn. Maybe if you could read and digest a book a day, you could be a Will Hunting style autodidact. Until then, keep your narcissism to yourself.

>>2963443
>tl;dr - $1.50 library card = $30,000 college tuition?

Yes. Education should be free. Why are we forcing the best minds of the future to go into debt in order to advance humanity?

Hell, with the internet, you don't even need that $1.50 for a library card. You've got your library for free already, if you know where to look.

The monetization of -everything- in our society is a major problem.

>>2965796
Professors shouldn't have to continually teach. It's an absurd distraction from research. They should be allowed to do pure research at some point after securing proper funding.

>>2965965

I'm not particularly informed on the differences between countries, but in the Netherlands it's something quite normal. Some of my professors only teach five or six hours a week, and nearly all universities have a few PhD positions for researchers, without the obligation to teach at all.

>>2965944
that should depends on the specialisation/major.
ie. if you major in science, you should be able to get it for free (as i am now lol!).
if petroleum engineering, hell the fuck no

>>2965981

Most larger American universities have the same thing, where some professors teach a lot, some a little, and some none at all. Most large ones also have non-research faculty who only focus on teaching. This is at least true in the sciences, I don't know about the humanities. The guy you were responding to most likely either goes to a small school or is talking out his ass.

>>2967356

This is definitely how it is at my school, at least in the biology department I know professors are able to negotiate into their contracts specific percentages of their time required for research versus teaching. I know my advisor normally handles a once a week graduate student seminar and beyond that teaches maybe one class every two years. She really just focuses on research.

Community college
• professors
• lab equipment
• others to debate/discuss
• under $20k

Books from libraries and various clubs around the cities/communities provide lucrative centers for knowledge/skill acquisition; community colleges are cheap with decent professors and lab equipment; Internet is a rich a source of contacts (for debate and exchange of ideas, etc) and resources (images, data tables, books, communities, etc) as well.

You don't necessarily /need/ college to gain the same knowledge and skills, but you would have to diversify. Actually, if you go around the *chans, you can see that many people made their own labs, chemicals, and equipment without ever having to step in a college.

>>2967450
>you can see that many people made their own labs, chemicals, and equipment without ever having to step in a college.

how

I learn MORE from self directed learning with a textbook.
Why? Because professors only teach half of the book.
When I'm my own professor I teach the whole book.