I think you’ve defined a tutor. Tutors cost less than college tuition. And top professors answer emails from non-students, sometimes they teach for free on MOOCs. Perhaps you’re on a very narrow field where knowledge is extremely scarce, but that’s atypical.

For the cost of a college education at some places you could likely hire a knowledgeable professor of the skill set you’re interested in to live with you for four years.

Nobody will loan you money to do that, howvevr.

People would probably loan you money for that if you have the income or collateral to support a loan.

> The big part of education is being able to directly ask a knowledgeable person once you're stuck.

Stuck on what? For an undergrad, those problems can easily be solved by going online or to a tutor for a fraction of the cost. And that's for STEM based problems, humanities is all about flattering whatever opinions the professor personally holds.

The best piece of advice I got was from one of my english highschool teachers who told me a story about how when he was in university he was getting graded really poorly on essays until he basically regurgitated what he thought the the professor wanted to hear.

It's been a while since I've been to university, but I think it probably still holds.

Now you know why businesses love university graduates! Being told what you want is a prime mover in business.

Now back to my TPS reports.

Another unique bonus of university education: in my undergrad one of the professors noticed that I cared about the subject material more than my classmates.

Due to this he gave me opportunities to perform research in areas that I didn't even know existed.

Had I not gone to a university I never would have been exposed to these areas of technology.

"humanities is all about flattering whatever opinions the professor personally holds" - maybe at some universities, but not at a good liberal arts school.

Good liberal arts schools don't really exist in the US anymore, unless we're talking about something like St. John's College or maybe some Catholic universities. I believe the capture of university humanities departments by critical theory is pretty complete at this point, and the sciences are rapidly being colonized.

It seems possible to me that people of a less analytic personality type can improve learning using the cue, "imagine you wanted to socially impress a particular person, an academic". The same way a weightlifter who doesn't study the anatomy of external hip rotation can get good results with "screw your feet into the floor", or GPT-3 from "Let's think step by step". It leverages instinct to do what isn't understood consciously. I agree you're going to need originality to really excel.