27 Responses to Don’t Go To College, Create Your Own For $4,000

1. JV says:

   January 7, 2016 at 12:40 pm

   It’s easy for those of us who went to college and have benefitted from the headstart a college degree gave us in our careers (or for those of us with more technical degrees, the necessity of a degree to even start a career) to say that college isn’t worth it. But of course, that’s bullshit. A college degree almost guarantees greater earning power throughout one’s life and provides an entry into most of the more intellectually fulfilling careers.

   I’m also skeptical that online and/or self-directed courses can be a substitute for teacher-led courses. They are great supplements, I think, and a lot of fun. But for an 18 year-old with no idea where to start, having an established curriculum taught by qualified instructors is invaluable. They will expose them to things and ideas they probably wouldn’t have stumbled across on their own, and provide some kind of rigor around completing assignments in a timely manner. As a former teacher, I can’t tell you how many people need that structure.

   Also, once you get out of the more elite institutions and into state schools, a lot of that trigger warning crap goes away. State schools are great institutions, for the most part, and still very affordable, at least out here in California. For the time being.

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   • Blowhard, Esq. says:

     January 7, 2016 at 1:01 pm

     “It’s easy for those of us who went to college and have benefitted from the headstart a college degree gave us in our careers (or for those of us with more technical degrees, the necessity of a degree to even start a career) to say that college isn’t worth it. But of course, that’s bullshit. A college degree almost guarantees greater earning power throughout one’s life and provides an entry into most of the more intellectually fulfilling careers.”

     Fair enough, but do most people who get college degrees now go on to intellectually fulfilling careers? I don’t think so. And for those who are going into the trades — a career path that is frequently as or more lucrative than the college route — a curriculum like this can fill in the gaps such a person missed.

     I’m also skeptical that online and/or self-directed courses can be a substitute for teacher-led courses. “They are great supplements, I think, and a lot of fun. But for an 18 year-old with no idea where to start, having an established curriculum taught by qualified instructors is invaluable. They will expose them to things and ideas they probably wouldn’t have stumbled across on their own, and provide some kind of rigor around completing assignments in a timely manner. As a former teacher, I can’t tell you how many people need that structure.”

     Yes, the autodidact route isn’t for everyone. Being forced to attend classes and complete assignments has its advantages. But it’s not like the trad college route doesn’t have enormous downsides either.

     Community and support are a big part of the trad experience. However, for those suited to it, you can get a lot of that camaraderie by participating in online forums or by blogging.

     “Also, once you get out of the more elite institutions and into state schools, a lot of that trigger warning crap goes away. State schools are great institutions, for the most part, and still very affordable, at least out here in California. For the time being.”

     This is a good point too. I got my undergrad degree in California. I went to a community college for two years then transferred to a UC. Far, far cheaper than the elite route and less intellectual trendoid bullshit indoctrination, although that kind of crap was still there at my mid-tier state university.

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     • JV says:

       January 7, 2016 at 2:29 pm

       “Intellectually fulfilling career” was a bad choice of words on my part. I just meant a somewhat challenging and rewarding career. For instance, I’m a web developer. It’s not a dream job but it’s interesting and challenging and always changing. It is VERY difficult to get a job in my field without a bachelor’s degree of some kind, any kind, really, as mine is in English Lit. We don’t look at candidates without a degree, for better or worse.

       I agree wholeheartedly that the trades should be given more attention and kids should be more exposed to them as a career option. I think there is a movement around that, with Mike Rowe from the show Dirty Jobs as a spokesman for it through his Profoundly Disconnected initiative: http://profoundlydisconnected.com/.

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     • Kevin O'Keeffe says:

       January 9, 2016 at 3:57 pm

       “And for those who are going into the trades — a career path that is frequently as or more lucrative than the college route — a curriculum like this can fill in the gaps such a person missed.”

       There’s a common belief that people going into the trades, aren’t really interested in this sort of material…and while that may often be true, neither are most college students. To the extent they grapple with material like this at all in today’s post-secondary educational milieu, it is often only grudgingly, as a sort of perceived vocational ed for a white collar job. Never-the-less, one of the best-read guys I ever met, was a municipal gardener up in San Mateo County (just south of San Francisco), and I think that as kolluj descends further into a sort of parody of itself, and as jobs in the trades continue to compare quite favorably to what one can obtain with a B.A. in Sociology or whatnot, we will see more people like that ie., people with an avid interest in cultural & intellectual life, who don’t work in the career paths most stereotypically associated with that sort of mindset (who may have also chosen to forego the $45K in debt, which would’ve paid for a higher educational experience largely devoid of exposure to such materials), still hungry for the sort of educational experience their grandparents might’ve had access to. I went to college without encountering hardly any of this stuff. I eventually got around to Plato’s Republic, Moby Dick, and some small portion of the other stuff listed here, but that was entirely of my own volition. My university experience included lectures about the Allegory of the Cave, but actually assigning The Republic, was deemed too much for us to endure, apparently.

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2. Ron Pavellas says:

   January 7, 2016 at 12:52 pm

   Thank you for this. I looked twice, I admit rather rapidly, and I don’t see Toynbee’s “A Study of History”. I think this would would useful as one of the first books to read in that it gives an overview of the entire experience of recorded history, and its “26 civilizations.” Also the collected letters between Adams and Jefferson give a focused view of the energies and controversies affecting the development of the new nation, USA, and their different speculations about its future. A friend brought to my attention a recent book which I have not yet bought: THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES, By Jay Ogilvy–a unique view of history in analyzing its wars, as far as I can tell.

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3. Fenster says:

   January 7, 2016 at 12:58 pm

   Great list.

   Higher education may about lifestyle in the moment and about signalling after the fact. But the livin’ is easy and employers have not quite yet figured out an alternative to the credentials offered up by the industry. So for now, hacking higher education is still in the background.

   Here’s a good book on it.

   and an actual “place”

   http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2015/5/15/minerva-future-college-education.html

   and the do it yourself communal approach was highlighted in the recent film The Ivory Tower.

   And then there’s always the old stand-bys like St. John’s College, in Annapolis and Santa Fe. A full-on classics curriculum–no Teaching Company on Aristotle when you have Aristotle to read.

   The problem with these places is that no one wants to go there.

   But then we all know college is wasted on the young.

   Who are themselves wasted.

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4. Fenster says:

   January 7, 2016 at 1:12 pm

   Also since I apparently old enough to be your grandpa, having gone to college in the Sixties, I am equipped to answer your question about how bursts of zaniness were understood back in the day.

   As Dostoevsky wrote, “the proposition ‘two and two make five’ is not without its attractions.” For well-bred youngsters who grew up normal on the surface but (pace Paul Goodman) a tad absurd underneath, the idea of willful irrationality is hugely seductive. Stop making sense!

   I may have sent this along before but here’s my take on 1969 campus craziness, written in 2000.
   ————

   It was 1969 I think, and I was a student at a large Eastern university
   at least as well known for its football team as its politics. I was
   living in a so-called “co-op”, which was basically an old, beat-up,
   university owned Victorian house. You got a break on tuition and
   board since it was cheap for the university to offer the option and,
   given my family’s income, the option made financial sense. In truth,
   though, the real reason I wanted to join was that the co-op was a
   kind-of “anti-fraternity”, a self-selected assortment of vaguely
   countercultural misfits proud of its identity with the changing of the
   times and its generally rebellious spirit.

   However, where that spirit put us on the dial where “the revolution”
   proper was concerned was not at all clear. Unquestionably, we all
   tilted in that direction, but was this tilt a generationally-inspired
   obligatory genuflect, or the real thing? I don’t think we knew.

   Then one day there was a riot. It started out about racism on the
   football team, but it was of course about a lot more than that. The
   co-op was situated right on the main drag, so we were right in the
   middle of it. Our front porch afforded a birds-eye view, as though we
   were weather watchers looking at an approaching storm.

   We saw the usual pattern, including a willed escalation of violence on
   the part of the protestors, presumably in order to draw even more
   police to the scene and, with a little luck, to get them bashing some
   heads. You’ll recall the logic: you must bring on the repression in
   order to show the bankruptcy of the system and then the people will
   understand.

   Things weren’t going that well that day for the riot. There were just
   not enough participants against the police–witness our little group
   watching things from the front porch of the house rather than diving
   in. I remember some very angry and probably frustrated demonstrators
   smashing the windows on cars right across the street trying to whip up
   the crowd. Finally, it occurred to the demonstrators that what they
   needed was a barricade, dammit! Once we have a barricade, we can
   clearly demarcate our turf on this street from that of the police and
   the barricade can serve as a symbol and rallying cry!

   Then the question: how will we build a barricade? And the answer: the
   pile of firewood stacked over there beside the co-op! And so our
   firewood–the wood that served to stoke our communal hearth through
   the difficult and snowy winter–was dragged out onto the street to
   serve as a barricade.

   That’s when I had one of my awakenings. I remember walking down into
   the melee and taking the wood back to the house, piece by piece. This
   act was not without danger: I remember one of the demonstrators, his
   face contorted with rage, threatening to crack my skull with a
   baseball bat. But as far as I was concerned the wood was going back.

   What was my awakening? Oh, I guess you could say from a Marxist
   perspective that I simply realized my bourgeois class interest. And
   there is a sense in which I do not dispute this–although the
   implications of even this interpretation are telling. After all,
   “Amerika” was even then profoundly bourgeois and nowadays, with the
   number of shareholders exceeding union membership, it is even more so.
   So any kind of revolution under the circumstances needed to be
   profoundly anti-democratic and elitist.

   I also came to feel, in that existential moment when push came to
   shove, how very much the participants in the riot were animated by a
   whole lot more than simple idealism gone a bit rotten. There was a
   real taste for the disorder and the violence going round-it was a
   thing in itself. And I came to believe that my ingrained affiliation
   with the left was nothing more than the product of pure hype, at least
   as much as my taste in rock or my choice of deodorant. It was mostly
   on the surface, and didn’t speak to me in any deep sense.

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5. H.D. Miller says:

   January 7, 2016 at 8:48 pm

   Way too many people go to college; something made plain by juxtaposing two facts: 1) 65% of American high school grads enroll in college, 2) 50% of Americans have IQs below 100.

   Having said that, the biggest problem with autodidactism is that you’re going to be excited by what you’re reading, by ideas and philosophies and theories, and you’re going to want to talk to people about all of that. And as an autodidact, it’s hard to find someone who will share your enthusiasms, someone who can help you correct your errors.

   You get a lot more out of the material with a good teacher, and a great teacher will just blow your mind. Some of that can come from the lectures of the Great Courses series, but more as spectator than a participant. Likewise, interaction with peers who are wrestling with the same material can be incredibly fun and helpful. Yes, you don’t strictly need college to find your jedi masters and your peers, but that’s the likeliest place to encounter them. Plus, in college, you’ll have a lot more free time to sit around in a coffee shop reading and talking than you would if you were in the rat race.

   Ultimately, however, the biggest problem with this laudable reading list is that the vast majority of people aren’t interested in any of this. At the end of the work day, most people just want to turn on the television and watch the Big Bang Theory, or NCIS: Peoria, or whatever. The majority of people have no interest in ideas, and little ability to think deeply about abstractions. (Remember, 50% of people have IQs below 100.) So, building a DIY college degree is fun for us, but few will ever try to do it.

   There is, however, one group that is totally excited by deep reading in the humanities: successful middle-aged men.

   For whatever reason, when many successful men hit 40 or 45, they go crazy for history and philosophy and literature, and begin to think about filling in the gaps in their education. This is especially true for doctors, dentists, engineers and other men in technically demanding fields who feel they didn’t get enough humanities in college.

   I get into the best conversations with middle-aged men who are plowing through the history of Byzantium, or have decided to read all of Faulkner, front to back. And it happens to me all the time. And these are the same people who are buying the Great Courses lectures, and dragging their wives on history-themed tours of Europe.

   Outside of that demographic, however, it’s very rare for me to encounter anyone who cares about any of this more than superficially, unless they majored in it in college.

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6. jjbees says:

   January 7, 2016 at 10:29 pm

   I seriously considered going to St. John’s as a high school student looking at colleges, but instead was given a scholarship to a state school and went there instead.

   Your “classical” education is what they used to call the trivium/quadrivium, and it was a prerequisite for a young person to be educated in the western canon BEFORE going out into the world to pursue their field of study. It’s extremely hard to justify someone over the age of 20 spending years reading the Classics when a person in their 20’s needs to be out in the world learning skills and making money and fighting the battles of the present day.

   The problem with education is that the trivium/quadrivium/classical education, whatever you wish to call it, was always for the intellectual, moneyed, upper classes. Universal education was the death knell of the classical education because the classical education, by its very nature of attempting to edify the tween and teenage mind with greek and roman literature, philosophy, and language, means that it is out of reach of the mostle feeble minded populace. At its foundation it is elitist. Universal education, with it’s no child left behind ethic, must appeal only to the lowest common denominator.

   But I really must emphasize that these books ought to be a prerequisite to learning skills. I spent 4 years in college in a pseudo-liberal arts field before going onto medical school, and I would give anything to have those four years between eighteen and twenty-two to have learned the fundamentals of medicine, rather than puttering around in college. The time for my classical education ought to have been from kindergarten until starting college, where my real life’s work ought to have begun.

   Grown men studying the classics seriously as a college major seems masturbatory to me. At the end of it you will be a better man who is no good to anyone. I read classical literature in my very sparse free time, but as a person and member of your family you have a duty to, at some point, interact and live in the present time.

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7. agnostic says:

   January 8, 2016 at 2:05 pm

   Pretty light on art and music, but those media are more sensory / concrete and can’t be summarized so easily for preservation and transmission.

   At the end of the day, you still have to read the entire epic to experience the narrative, but you can summarize it through linguistic abstraction. These abstracts can be cataloged into a list, and curious people can consult them and dive further into whichever ones pique their interest.

   You can’t give the gist of an image or sound sequence (of any real length). You can only experience the whole thing directly. Without a list of simplified “abstracts” to consult or to have given to them as a recommendation, most people are going to look at the vast sea of thumbnail images (or physical plates) and feel overwhelmed — especially if they are going the autodidact route and have no guide. Ditto for the vast sea of audio files (or physical discs) in music.

   That’s probably why your list is also light on poetry — it’s the most concretely sensory verbal medium. It’s sort of about the narrative, or impression, or whatever — but it’s also sort of an after-thought to the sound pattern, the rhythm, and the myriad particular figures of speech that don’t make it into an abstract summary.

   I have no idea how to solve this problem, but it does need to be pointed out and thought about. Otherwise we’ll only be left with an appreciation for our heritage in the world of ideas, and be blind to our sensory-physical creations.

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8. agnostic says:

   January 8, 2016 at 2:21 pm

   The best art book I’ve read (not that I’m so well-read) is Romanticism by Jean Clay. No verbal, abstract, or ideological BS — only terse palpable prose to analyze the formal visual properties of the lush prints you’re looking at, and to explain how these separate choices lead to the desired holistic effects on the viewer.

   He also published books on Impressionism-to-Modern-Art, and Modern Art (1890-1918), which I would recommend even without having read them myself, based on how wonderful the book on Romanticism is.

   That will cover you from the late 18th C. up through WWI. From there, ask a specialist for books on earlier periods that are in the same vein and style as Jean Clay.

   These are oversized books published in the early 1980s (they could only have been created in such a sensory-rich period), and must be found used or in libraries. Used copies aren’t expensive on Amazon or ABE, though — looks like under $10-20. I don’t use the phrase “mind-blowing” now that it’s a pedestrian nerd-gasm word, but I can’t emphasize enough how spectacular it is.

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9. agnostic says:

   January 8, 2016 at 2:28 pm

   I’d go with Theory of Moral Sentiments rather than Wealth of Nations, which is like an economic version of Origin of Species — nobody reads it. It’s too bogged down in gritty naturalistic detail, and doesn’t draw out much in the way of patterns and insights.

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10. agnostic says:

    January 8, 2016 at 2:35 pm

    For big-picture history, I’d go with Peter Turchin. War and Peace and War is a popular version of scholarly monographs he’s written about the rise and fall of nations and empires, in a general and comparative framework.

    He also covers the rise and fall of political-economic stability within states, although so far there’s only a long, dense monograph on the topic (Secular Cycles). He’s writing a popular version, though, restricted to American history, coming out in the near future.

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11. epiminondas says:

    January 8, 2016 at 10:48 pm

    I would also include Theodor Mommsen’s “History of Rome”, which takes you from the beginning of Rome up to the death of Julius Caesar; and Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, which picks up with Augustus and traces the disintegration of the empire both in the west and that of Byzantium. Both works are also considered worthy from a literary standpoint. Mommsen was the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature. Also Ernst Jünger’s “Storm of Steel”, the most celebrated autobiographical account of a soldier’s experience in the trenches of World War I. There is nothing like it. Great list of books you have there, Blowhard.

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    • Blowhard, Esq. says:

      January 8, 2016 at 11:20 pm

      Gibbon is there!

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      • epiminondas says:

        January 9, 2016 at 11:11 am

        You’re right. I missed it.

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12. T.Rascal says:

    January 8, 2016 at 11:21 pm

    Excellent article! I’ve always been fascinated by chemistry but only had the finances to complete a portion of a biochemistry degree. Once you’ve been to any higher education science course you quickly realize success lies in learning the material inside and out, attending lectures is only moderately helpful. Plus you can audit online MIT courses completely gratis!

    Here’s what I’m studying now:

    Medical Physiology, Updated Edition: With STUDENT CONSULT Online Access, 1e
    $6.85
    Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 15th Edition
    $0.50
    Microbial Biotechnology – Fundamentals of Applied Microbiology 2’nd Edition
    $8.48
    Hormones, Second Edition 2nd Edition
    $1.34
    Organic Chemistry (6th Edition)
    $4.85
    Biochemical, Physiological & Molecular Aspects of Human Nutrition 2nd Edition
    $9.60
    Pharmaceutical Calculations 13th edition
    $0.46
    Vitamin K, Volume 78 (Vitamins and Hormones) 1st Edition
    $79.95 – (Kinda took it in the shorts – had to buy this one new.)
    Foye’s Principles of Medicinal Chemistry Fifth Edition
    $3.35
    The Biochemical Basis of Neuropharmacology 8th Edition
    $9.99

    -Total Cost of Learning Biochemistry
    $124.92
    (Technically $44.97, but I just happen to be very interested in Vitamin K.)

    It’s easy to latch onto the whole Nikola Tesla bandwagon and extol his under-appreciated genuis, but there is another under-dog genius I’ve taken a shine to recently – Percy Spencer. I’ll close with the only quote of his I could find:

    “I just got hold of a lot of textbooks and taught myself while I was standing watch at night.”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Spencer

    P.S. The Landmark Thucydides is phenomenal!

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13. Thursday says:

    January 9, 2016 at 11:39 pm

    Students would greatly benefit from the Great Courses lecture on a lot of these works.

    —–

    Elizabeth Vandiver has great lecture series on Greek Mythology, Homer, Virgil, and Greek Tragedy.

    Plato and Aristotle are going to be largely incomprehensible without some background. The lecture series by Robert C. Bartlett and David Roochnik are great for two different takes on the broad sweep of Greek philosophy, but Michael Sugrue on Plato is absolutely amazing. His take on the Sophists in the same course is great too. Roochnik has a separate course just for the Republic.

    Anyone who takes the McInerney, Vandiver, Bartlett, Roochnik, and Sugrue courses will have a very solid grasp of Ancient Greece.

    —–

    William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman and Phillip Cary have great lecture series on Augustine.

    William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman are great on Dante.

    —–

    Thomas Aquinas is also going to be incomprehensible to any new student. There is no Great Courses lecture series on him, so I’d go with Edward Feser’s short introductory book.

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    • Thursday says:

      January 9, 2016 at 11:46 pm

      A book on Darwinian evolution would be very helpful, as well as some introductory EvPsych books. Stephen Pinker’s How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate would be my first picks.

      Cochran and Harpending and Dutton presume this knowledge.

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      • Thursday says:

        January 9, 2016 at 11:49 pm

        Introductions on Economics too. Smith won’t make sense without it. In fact, I would say get rid of Smith.

        Great Courses lectures:
        Timothy Taylor

        Books:
        Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
        Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics
        Joseph Heath, Filthy Lucre

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      • Thursday says:

        January 10, 2016 at 1:17 am

        The Quran is going to be incomprehensible too, without some background. I’ve included an intro to the book itself, a couple books on Islam in general, and a biography of Muhammad.

        Michael Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction
        Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick, The Vision of Islam
        Malise Ruthven, Islam: A Very Short Introduction
        W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman

        There’s also a Great Courses lecture series on Islam by John L. Esposito. I haven’t listened to it and he has a rep as a bit of an Islamic apologist. But it might still be good.

        —–

        I decided to do the same for the other religions too, as there are similar difficulties in all cases. I’ve included scriptures and translations where those weren’t in your main lists.

        —–

        Christianity

        The best three introductions I have found are as follows:
        C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
        John Stott, Basic Christianity
        Wayne Grudem, Christian Beliefs
        However, they are all from a broadly Protestant perspective, and have different strengths.

        Michael Coogan, The Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction
        Luke Timothy Johnson, The New Testament: A Very Short Introduction

        Richard Baukham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction
        E.P. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction

        Timothy Luke Johnson has some good lecture series on both Jesus and Paul for The Great Courses. There are some lecture series on the Old Testament as well, but I haven’t listened to them.

        —–

        Judaism

        I haven’t read them, but there are short introductions by Jacob Neusner; Norman Solomon; and Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok.

        Isaiah M. Gafni has a Great Courses lecture series.

        —–

        Hinduism

        The Mahabharata, adapted by R.K. Narayan
        The Ramayana, adapted by R.K. Narayan
        The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Barbara Stoller Miller
        Hindu Myths, edited and translated by Wendy Doniger

        The Rig Veda, translated by Wendy Doniger
        The Upanishads, translated by Eknath Easwaren

        Klaus K. Klostermaier, Hinduism: A Beginner’s Guide

        Mark W. Muesse has a very good Great Courses lecture series.

        —–

        Buddhism

        Basic Teachings of the Buddha, edited and translated by Glenn Wallis
        The Dhammapada, translated by Eknath Easwaren
        The Lotus Sutra, translated by Burton Watson
        The Heart Sutra, translated by Red Pine
        The Diamond Sutra, translated by Red Pine

        Rupert Gethin, Foundations of Buddhism
        Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught
        Damien Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction

        PaleoRetiree recommends David Eckel’s Great Courses lecture series.

        —–

        Confucianism

        Confucius, The Analects, translated by Annping Chin
        (New Penguin translation with good commentary to actually make this work comprehensible)

        Michael Schumann, Confucius and the World He Created
        Daniel K. Gardner, Confucianism: A Very Short Introduction

        —–

        Taoism

        Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo
        Chuang Tzu, translated by David Hinton

        I haven’t read any of them, but there are short introductions by James Miller, Eva Wong, Louis Komjathy, and Hans-Georg Moeller.

        —–

        Minor religions have been left off of here.

        —–

        The most helpful theoretical books on religion in general I’ve come across are:

        Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds
        Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
        Ara Norenzayan, Big Gods
        Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane
        Rupert Ross, Dancing with a Ghost

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      • Thursday says:

        January 10, 2016 at 1:26 am

        As far as recent history goes, I would include books (or lecture series, if available) on The Third Reich, Communist Russia and Communist China. Biographies of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and Mao would be good too.

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14. Thursday says:

    January 10, 2016 at 12:18 am

    Here are the Columbia University Core Curriculum lists:

    Click to access 2015-16%20LIT%20HUM%20SYLLABUS_1.pdf

    Click to access CC%20Syllabus%202015-2016_0.pdf

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