How to Save on College Tuition (and get a superior education in the offing)

As you know college is clearly not affordable and has now become almost exorbitant. Students have now incurred an amount of debt estimated at a staggering $1.2 trillion dollars which is of course a serious problem to be solved. I am merely a private citizen but I believe there is a simple and even obvious solution which I have not seen or heard discussed prior which I believe can help prevent future students from suffering in this manner.

Simply stated it is "Do It Yourself" and "Read to Succeed".

Whatever information a so-called "teacher" imparts via an oral lecture is readily found in and can be obtained from textbooks written by experts in their respective fields. Are we to spend the rest of our lives always relying on "teachers" who do nothing more than present to us what is already on the written page whenever we wish to learn something that makes no sense. We all know how to read. So to save the enormous and unnecessary cost of tuition a student can simply purchase the textbooks on any subject which the student wishes to master and read and study them in their own home in their own time and in their own way.

I further suggest that not only is this clearly a far less expensive way to learn but also superior. Students in school are treated as objects of manufacture in a factory as if on an assembly line. They are "taught" at a pace chosen by the "teacher" not the student. They are also limited by an imposed semester time limit also not chosen by the student. Every student is different with unique and different needs interests and abilities. No one knows the student's needs interests and abilities better than the student themself. Without such imposed limits and restrictions the student is able to take the time needed and the manner best suited to them to study to mastery the chosen subject otherwise the above mentioned limits and constraints result in mediocrity. Do we want a nation of graduates schooled in mediocrity of course not. A student schooled in the manner I suggest will I believe not be so hampered and so can demand and achieve excellence something we all want for ourselves each other and our Country.

Furthermore in my estimation the college curriculum includes many useless courses. In my own experience I was required to take a number of electives as an example 16th Century English Literature. I don't know how this course or the others helped me in any way. I certainly don't believe a course such as this or the others helped me get a job or helped me in my career as a junior physicist and computer programmer.

One often hears of the supposed need for a so called "liberal well-rounded" education. If this is true why pay great and needless tuition for it when such "well-rounding" subjects can be read and studied as easily as one reads the daily newspaper or so I presume. Do we need a "teacher" to help us do so of course not.

This approach has worked for myself. In my adult studies which I pursued on my own by reading and studying textbooks on mathematics and physics without a "teacher" I believe that I understand and have mastered the subjects to a degree clearly greater than I did when I was a formal student in undergraduate and graduate school precisely because I am now free to study in my own way and in my own time without the aforementioned constraints limitations and restrictions.

So my advice to any student is to choose a subject they wish to master buy the relevant textbooks from multiple authors on a given topic if necessary should one author's exposition prove insufficient or to obtain a greater understanding and knowledge read and study them thoroughly to mastery convince and demonstrate such skill and knowledge to a hiring manager and get a great job at IBM for example.

If hiring managers insist on so called grades as is commonly done to indicate a candidate's mastery of a subject then I presume businesses can and will be formed to perform such evaluations at a cost which I presume would be a small fraction of what would otherwise be paid for needless tuition and presumably it would be helpful if the business community were to be informed they can if they choose help alleviate the economic burden known by so many and lift the entire country's economy by insisting on hiring on the basis of a candidate's demonstrated ability instead of credentials.

This solution I presume may have significant economic benefits for the country. I presume it will strengthen the middle class by relieving them of an enormous economic burden and I presume it would increase the size of the middle class by providing the lower class an opportunity to better themselves in a manner which they can afford which otherwise would be denied them due to the traditional high cost.
 
There may be a problem with the above approach namely will universities be able to finance the scientific research performed there which I presume must still continue if students abandon them to study independently and so no longer receive tuition payments for which I do not have an answer as I am ignorant of university finances but perhaps this is a separate problem with a separate solution which will present itself as needed.

In closing may I ask why pay for something which one can obtain for free. If some still insist on taxpayer funded college tuition as some now do I might borrow from the late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and say "Before you ask what your country can do for you ask what you can do for yourself."

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