I'm going to do things backwards here. I am requesting my readers (all 2 of you), to rant (or rave) to me about the college experience. Specifically, I'm trying to understand what value a college education has (other than the piece of paper that you get to hang on your wall and the line on your resume). I feel like the money i spent on college was a huge waste (and let's not even talk about law school). I feel like i have enough of a curiosity and thirst for knowledge that I could learn independently. Yes, there was an occassional thought provoking professor or two, but i feel like we are all professors and all students (wow, that sounds cliched).

What did you learn in college that you couldn't learn by reading on your own? whether in a book or on the internet? What kind of structured lectures couldn't be recreated in a conversation at a bar?

In my mind, college was 4 years of quasi independence, w/o any real world concerns or obligations. We were surrounded by people our age, and obviously that faciliated finding interesting people who were thought provoking and who challenged the way you went about thinking. But that's not really "college". that's the atmosphere around it. That college ave, not Rutgers.

So, explain to me what i'm missing? Because i really want to believe that college is something more than a scam to transfer middle class families' life savings into these moneymaking institutions.

discuss. PLEASE.