I get what you are saying, but most people couldn’t afford the journal subscriptions necessary to get a graduate education, or to learn any field in depth. Hope

I get what you are saying, but most people couldn’t afford the journal subscriptions necessary to get a graduate education, or to learn any field in depth. Hopefully open access obviates this problem. The other value of being on campus is having access to professors. Not clear how to find the same master-apprentice relationship outside of academia for some fields.