Questionable -- they would certainly learn different things if they did it in their basement. For example, so much in university is already set up for you -- co

Questionable -- they would certainly learn different things if they did it in their basement. For example, so much in university is already set up for you -- constructing your own lab in your basement, calibrating machines, writing custom software to run experiments, etc. would be quite a learning experience. (I'm talking about experimental fields here.) But more importantly, in universities you are guided away from things that do not work usually without entirely understanding why. Through independent study, you would go down these incorrect paths and have a much richer understanding. Instead of doing things how everyone else does them, you'd gain new perspectives than the status quo, and this would give you a leg up. Of course, this all presumes that the student is extremely self motivated. Unfortunately, even at the graduate level these students are very rare. This is why some professors are very hands on and others are very hands off -- different students work best at different levels of independence.