Times have changed. We are as close to "future" as it gets. Technology is at it's peak and only getting better. The world is more binary today and "digital age" is where we live in. With almost everything connected through the web do we need to rely on universities anymore? Do we need to attend physical and expensive classes anymore? Or is youtube more than enough to get us where we need to be? Are we ready to transition to "futurama", yet?
Universities can be long, and not to mention, expensive. Very expensive! Although, that is very subjective. In many countries in the world higher education is free or dirt cheap. From many of those countries we see the greatest academic brains emerging. But is it needed anymore? I can hop onto a youtube video with a mere click and learn all I need to build a self-solving rubik's cube with my only expense being the electricity and internet bill. That, is only the surface level that can eventually lead me to building a self-sustaining AI bee that can solve the bee crisis of the world.
Lets think about it. The greatest genius minds of today, and historically too, have either never attended universities or dropped out of them. The greatest minds that have shaped modern physics, technology, even automobiles are those who do not have a university degree to back them up.
If history indeed is the best teacher then we should take notes from it and say screw universities, I got this. You with me, youtube?" But, we don't. Not many do. Universities can sometimes be expensive, boring, not as innovative and at times outdated. Sometimes. Like I mentioned above there are cheaper options, and likewise there are universities who have come to ride along the wave of modern technology by implementing free e-books, VR technology for teaching purposes and stay-at-home programs where much is done online.
I have spent the better half of a decade in a medical university learning how to serve to the well-being of a person. I have spent year and years going to classes and roaming the dire corridors of the hospitals with one thing in mind - Health. If you are suffering from a cardiac arrest and need an immediate stunt in your artery to once again let blood flow to your heart and save your life and I throw you a person who has watched over a 100 youtube videos on how to perform a stunt surgery, would you sign off your permissions to him? Or would you rather sign it off to the white beard, wrinkly head, thick glasses old lemon who has spent his years turning pages, attending classes, walking dire corridors and a qualification of independent 100 cardiac surgeries.....and a medical degree?
I brought this point up because we often attend seminars where we are taught how to deal with "know it all patients". Patients that have browsed webmd for 10 minutes and think they know what is going on. Patients that watch an influencer on youtube and talk to us about a magical medical product that the youtuber was sponsored by and how that magical pill can solve everything. We are taught how to deal with internet-natural-medicine. Natural medicine that is infected by the advertisers and greedy people that care little about human life and care more for the money. So much so that they have infiltrated something as pure as natural medicine and ruined it.
Not everything on the internet is true. We have to keep that in mind when we think of the fields where internet or youtube can do more harm than benefit.
That might be too extreme of a situation. Lets just say you were commissioning a house down in South Carolina, an earthquake prone zone. Would you hire an online self-taught architect or would you choose the architect with a degree on him? Say both have them 0 experience in the respective field. Who would you commission to build your house from scratch?
The point I am trying to make is that there are still places where self-teaching and youtube aren't reliable. There are places where youtube is a good substitute. Trotting back to history we can see the great minds I mentioned above were all self-taught and very persistent. They were in a field that they have put immeasurable amount of time and effort including quarantining themselves till they perfected their craft. That is a key point to remember. What guarantee does anyone give that they have put in enough time and effort in their craft that you could trust their abilities?
Yes, there are a lot of places that youtube or something similar can be a substitute for universities. There is a very good chance that you could never attend university and still be the best in your lane. But that does not invalidate the role universities play in other lanes. Degrees do shape a lot of our decisions, from job security to trust. We may just have entered the realm where universities may no longer be needed, but we still aren't in the realm where universities can be completely become irrelevant.
We are a little away from "future". It still will take some more advancement in technology till we are completely free of the need of universities. We may be ready to compensate, in some areas, universities for youtube. But are we ready for the life where universities aren't needed anymore? I think not.
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