in progress

college was a bust. education wise at least. barring accreditation-requiring subject matter—medicine, law, education, etc.—i would argue that as being the case for many college graduates. don't me wrong, you do come away with better verbal and quantitative competence, improved cognitive skills and greater political & social values. but, as far attaining knowledge pertinent to your interests (assuming you have them and don't spend most of your college career "undecided") it is very much possible to learn all you need on your own. buy a book and read it. then buy another and read it. and so on. its that easy. frankly, the people i met in college were about the only thing that made it all worthwhile. you can get the same experience of being in college—the people, the clubs, the professors, the classes, the partying—by just hanging out at a college. colleges and universities aren't ranked by the caliber of their education, they're ranked by the caliber of their students, all of whom will only get into schools at their level or below it, either way its diamonds in, diamonds out, garbage in, garbage out. its all up to the individual student how well they'll learn and how willing they are do to so.

in my case, most of what i learn in college (whatever was worth keeping anyway) i learned on my own. for a few reasons, one, i pick things up relatively quickly and the cater-to-the-lowest common-denominator method of teaching at my school kept progress at a snails pace, two, many of the things i wanted to learn were not being taught (thats particular to design though for me), and three, many of the classes i would have loved to take were not part of my particular curriculum and couldn't fit into my schedule, bummer. since graduating college about a year ago, i have probably learned more than in my entire four years there.

college for actual learning is a bit of a toss up. but college as a tool for teaching you how to learn is indispensable.