>It has been possible for a century to self-study to the equivalent of a bachelor's degree using textbooks That is not the point of a liberal higher education,

>It has been possible for a century to self-study to the equivalent of a bachelor's degree using textbooks That is not the point of a liberal higher education, though. Historically (for much longer than a century) people were tutored k-12 in their own homes, with their families and neighbors, and not in these government-run public schools. You could learn whatever you wanted from books at home, and a governess and key instructors. Still, you were sent off to college at a certain age, to be finished as either a man or a woman at a place like Harvard or a women’s college. The purpose was not principally to teach you math or anthropology that you couldn’t otherwise learn yourself (though you would learn some math and anthropology). There was another purpose