Although many things have changed over the last century, and people are adapting to these changes, still we can't deny the fact that the majority of the formal educational spaces fail to provide the experience that is needed for survival and most of the time it kills the creativity and curiosity in you.

First of all, I am not saying that Universities or Institutions are worthless in any way. In fact, because of these educational spaces only we can find people with varied perspectives and backgrounds and is one of the best places to network but still the hefty tuition fee just for networking is in my opinion just a waste of resources.

A typical engineering degree in India is nothing but attending long lectures (that too might be decoded only by a few), and full of assignments for a major part of your 4-year time. You might say it teaches you discipline and helps you to learn multi-tasking and stress handling and teachers are just a guide you need to pave your way out.

If it were 10-15 years back, I might have agreed as at that time people hadn't got proper internet accessibility and you have to resonate with me that there were only a few good guides/mentors/teachers then and the same proportion is continuing but the internet has changed the accessibility. And redundant assignments without real-world implications for learning to handle stress are just redundant.

So in 2023, the only reason you might spend on hefty college fees is for the social experience and to experience education from peers and only in a few cases from a good mentor. And there are very good alternatives to this other than going to Universities and that is the reason why Outliers drop out and those who understand from the start skip it totally.

So it's a hard time to really redefine what we mean by education and rethink if sparing the hard-earned money for getting that piece of paper is really worth it.