I fundamentally agree, but there are a few angles it omits: - Knowing what to learn. Being interested in something is great, but it usually means you learn a l

I fundamentally agree, but there are a few angles it omits: - Knowing what to learn. Being interested in something is great, but it usually means you learn a lot about a rather narrow field, rather than being exposed to the breadth of things. A college with its variety of courses and its availability of professors that have spent their entire life on a subject might help to provide a good overview as a preliminary step. - Humane disciplines What the article describes is very much applicable to technology and science subjects, but less so if you’re going for an arts degree. There the academy plays a way more integral role and a lot of research happens for the sake of being published in scientific / academic publications. - Academic prestige / salary. This is probably more in favour of the article. Following up on the previous comment the role of the academy is very different in different fields of study. In liberal arts the academy is the central part of the system and a lot of people working in the field are researchers or otherwise contributing to it. Thus the prestige of teaching at the academy is high – and so is a professors salary when compared to what a lot of the other people in the field make. In technology however this is very different. There’s a lot of money to be made in the field and the most prestigious places to work at are intelligent startups or ground breaking companies like Google. Being a professor in the same field yields comparatively lower rewards and – pardon the generalisation – comes with lesser prestige. Especially since even in classically academic fields like research and innovation the tech companies have long ago taken the lead.