The glib and snarky reply is that most people who go to college never learn any of those things. The majority of people who go to college don't take classes whi

The glib and snarky reply is that most people who go to college never learn any of those things. The majority of people who go to college don't take classes which include FFTs or suffix arrays, or even essential things like probability. And yet, for some reason, this is just considered normal. You make a worthwhile point, though: for people studying without being in college, how can they make sure that they get the useful but scary- or boring-looking stuff? I would propose that some respectable people put together lists of the subjects that are important to understand for various fields of study, so that un-college folks don't just accidentally miss something important like linear algebra. You could go a step further and create tests or projects or some other mechanism for people to demonstrate that they've studied each topic and understood it. There's no inherent reason why colleges have to be in charge of both education and accreditation. (I think that the Khan Academy or one of its competitors may eventually grow into this.) I've found that it's easiest to learn things -- especially difficult things -- when you actually care. One of the hardest problems that the best teachers in college face is getting students to care. The thing that struck me, reading through the article and some of the stuff on uncollege.org, was the pervasive sense of actually giving a damn about education. There's got to be a way to use that.