(I don't mean to sound harsh on you, you sound smart and what I wrote has the wrong tone.)
"most of the time people learn things specific to the topic they are interested in."
Your structure is wrong. It's not most of the time all people. It's most of the people all the time. An autodidactic person (admittedly rare and an outlier) will have already studied design patterns or whatever, because they read obsessively and learn best that way.
I'm not trying to claim most people don't work that way. I'm saying there is a group of outliers that has both an ability to learn way better and faster than school can teach, and who dropout. These outliers are both highly desirable employees and cast off by the system. I think that normal people are projecting their own inability to self teach well at a college level onto the freaks who have this ability.
If you think there isn't a group of outliers who is better off self teaching, as able as any PHD's, and who drop out or don't attend school because it is stifling to their natural urge to learn, your worldview is excluding a lot of the most talented and creative people on the planet.
Whats so freaky about teaching yourself?! Learning college level material isn't some mystical magical thing that you need the professor who holds the keys to teach you! Unless they are the only repository of information and no textbook exists to learn the material. Once you start understanding the vocab (and stop wasting your time by not reading the best books for your topic) it's just like anything else. Hopefully you can find a professor/writer who isn't horrible at writing and learned less is more. If not, you'll figure it out.
"most of the time people learn things specific to the topic they are interested in."
Your structure is wrong. It's not most of the time all people. It's most of the people all the time. An autodidactic person (admittedly rare and an outlier) will have already studied design patterns or whatever, because they read obsessively and learn best that way.
I'm not trying to claim most people don't work that way. I'm saying there is a group of outliers that has both an ability to learn way better and faster than school can teach, and who dropout. These outliers are both highly desirable employees and cast off by the system. I think that normal people are projecting their own inability to self teach well at a college level onto the freaks who have this ability.
If you think there isn't a group of outliers who is better off self teaching, as able as any PHD's, and who drop out or don't attend school because it is stifling to their natural urge to learn, your worldview is excluding a lot of the most talented and creative people on the planet.