When I went to the next class in person, our professor was finishing up the exact same example problem from the lecture video. It could have just been coincidence that that exact lecture lined up the way it did, but it kind of opened my eyes to how silly it was to have professors repeating the same thing year after year.

The peer group in the ivy leagues have been strongly pre-selected to value achievement in academic related pursuits.

Could you supply some examples? I know of Western Governors University, but it only has limited majors.

In particular, do you know of any online degree programs in materials science?

A lot of materials science is highly experimental, so it's not super easy to teach advanced skills. I went to a top 10 materials science school for my PhD, and the absolute vast majority of what I learnt was self-taught. However there is a caveat - I self-learnt by doing, and failing multiple times. The advantage of a high ranked school is that the research facilities are top notch and professors bring in external grants, so the research facilities are always maintained at a high standard through overhead costs.

As a self-taught developer and proud of it, I like this quote. A lot. It's easy to let yourself fall into a toxic mindset where you (and many employers) unjustifiably feel inferior because you didn't take the traditional 4-year college route.

But in less than a decade, hearing of couples who met on Tinder has gone from a novelty to the norm, reminding us of how quickly societal paradigm shifts can happen (for the better, imo).