How To Get a Free University-Level Education In Any Subject
Today, I’m going to break down the University learning experience into simple steps so that you can recreate your own University-level education system that’ll cover pretty much everything you’d get from a traditional degree course.
Most University courses are made up of classes that revolve around a few books. You can get most of the value of a University course from simply reading. But let’s get all of the elements for the sake of completeness.
Let’s talk about the services a University offers:
- Lectures (Learning from Experts)
- Reading Lists (Arguably where the real value is… more on that in a minute)
- Seminars (Working with Peers)
- Networking
- Recognition/Certification
There are many other reasons you’d go to University, but those are the five key features.
Realistically, you can pick any subject and achieve most of those things from the comfort of your own living room. Of course, you can’t get certified with a degree if you teach yourself. However, there may be a way around that… we’ll talk about all of these steps in a moment. Firstly, let’s talk about the one way that Universities tend to fail their students.
What’s Missing From The List?
Getting a University education isn’t what a lot of people think it is.
You might think that going to University to study English or creative writing will turn you into a writer. It won’t.
You might think that studying psychology at University will turn you into a psychologist. It won’t.
The missing ingredient from pretty much every degree program is practical experience. You can go through a three year degree in a subject without ever having done anything.
Just look at the list above: Lectures aren’t going to give you hands-on experience. Reading lists won’t. Networking, seminars, certification – none of these things guarantee or include practical experience.
(Some post-graduate certifications require you to do practical experience. Medicine, Law, Teaching… but these aren’t undergraduate, which is the focus of this article.)
Even if you go to a brilliant University, you’re going to have to orchestrate opportunities to test out your newfound knowledge (such as it’ll be) in the real world.
Because this is a writing-based and online business-based blog, that means writing your own books, starting your own businesses and doing your own projects.
I’m not here to make a judgement on whether not providing you hands-on experience and skills makes University worthless; I’m just making an observation. For the most part, University (and college for you American folks,) doesn’t give you this, and so you have to bear that in mind when you’re thinking of enrolling.
Let’s now talk about how you can get a free University-level education by breaking the experience into the steps from above.
Part One: Lectures
Lectures constituted the majority of the timetabled learning when I went to University.
You go into the lecture hall and a professor gives you a talk on some topic which you take notes on and then you leave. There’ll probably be a ten minute Q and A session at the end where your peers ask questions that have already been answered in the lecture and then you leave because you don’t want to ask a stupid question in front of everyone.
Let’s assume that sounds pretty terrible. How do you go about learning from experts without going to University?
There’s a really simple answer that most people don’t do. I’ve done it though, and will continue to do it in the future:
Simply find an expert and ask them questions.
I’ve written about how to ask questions before. Check it out with this link.
Outside of talking to experts, you can watch videos on YouTube, read their books (more on this in the next point) and hunt down articles and other stuff that authorities have written or been involved with.
The key here is picking an actual expert. Don’t learn from people who don’t know what they’re talking about. A couple of examples:
- If you want to learn about business learn it from a tycoon, not a lifestyle blogger.
- If you want to learn about music, learn from a professional, not a YouTube bedroom musician.
- If you want to learn about fitness go to a gym and find someone… don’t read endless bodybuilding.com posts.
You get the picture.
Part Two: Reading Lists
Reading lists are the most valuable part of your University education. The reading lists are also available for free a lot of the time. The books can be had for a few pounds in comparison to the cost of a degree. (Work that one out… but again, no judgement intended.)
Reading lists are the most important aspect of your degree course because everything else comes from them. Your lecturers are basically translating a chapter a lecture into normal human words. Your seminars and classes will often use exercises straight out of the books themselves. Your exams (if you have them) are going to be based on testing your comprehension and ability to repeat what’s in those books.
To get a free university-level education without going to University, you’re going to want to find a reading list from a top University, grab some of those books used and read and understand them all.
I don’t know about America, but Oxford and Cambridge are the top universities here. You can find most of their subject reading lists by simply Google searching for them.
Bear in mind that at University, most students don’t actually read anything on the list. By reading the books you find, you will be more knowledgeable than all of those people. You can even skip the really boring sounding ones. Say you’re trying to get a free university-level education in art; reading “The Fundamentals Of Art” is probably a necessity. “Stone-carving Techniques of the French Neo-Platonists from 1750-1760” (or whatever actual example there is) is probably not a necessity. Skip it.
As long as you follow the trail from Pre-beginner – beginner – intermediate – advanced, you’ll pick up the knowledge you need. Academic books are fastidious for footnotes and bibliographies as well, so the books will literally lead you to where you need to go next.
Part Three: Working With Peers
In a University setting, you’ll get to work with peers. Depending on whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, that sentence might sound great or terrible. Whatever you are, the experience isn’t great.
Most people in your classes won’t have read the material. They’ll have been browsing Twitter and Facebook during the lecture, and they’re probably only there in the first place because they aren’t quite hungover from the night before to stay in bed.
This makes for pretty unstimulating conversation.
To get a free University-level education in this aspect, you can go online on forums and subreddits and connect with other people who are actually interested in the subject.
Caveat: Don’t do this until after you’ve read expert material and gone through the reading list. Most people online are liars, retarded or both. Most of the information you see online is wrong, misleading or utterly useless.
Read a few books first so you have some sort of knowledge what you’re talking about. Then you’ll be able to see the incorrect information clearly.
Part Four: Networking
This step is pretty much the same as above. University is often hailed as the one true way to network with valuable people who’ll further your career.
I’d say that that’s an overly optimistic prediction.
Networking is networking, whether you’ve been to University or not. You’re still going to have to contact people and build relationships. There are very few (Read: None) relationships in the real world which are predicated on the class of your degree nor the place where you got it from.
Caveat: If you want to work in investment banking or law or something, then the rumours are that people do care about your University. I don’t have any first-hand experience with that, and you should probably get some advice from someone in the field.
Part Five: Certification
The one problem with the method I’m presenting is that you’re going to get a ton of knowledge without any academic qualifications to show for it.
The good news is that for most subjects, nobody really cares. I went for a job interview a couple of years back, and was terrified when one of the interviewers asked, “Why are you applying for this job when your degrees are in different subjects?”
I simply said I wanted to do something new and had been learning in my spare time. Both the interviewers then said, “That’s ok. Neither of us went to University to study X either. I did A, and he did B.”
The bad news: If you’re looking to go into a profession where a degree is essential, then there’s not much you can do about this issue. You can look into Open University courses, vocational courses or other alternative pathways though. Most subjects have alternative routes to qualification.
If you’re looking into a career where the degree isn’t an essential hallmark, then there are going to be millions of options for certification. Remember, most employers/clients won’t actually care about your qualifications. They’ll see you’ve got “ABC Technical Qualification from X” and they’ll think, “That sounds complicated, this guy must be smart!”
Finally, for most skills/subjects, qualifications don’t matter whatsoever. If you want to be a self-employed artist, nobody cares. If you want to be a project manager, then a project management course is going to be more valuable than a History degree. If you want to write books or start a website, nobody cares about your qualifications whatsoever.
P.S. You have started your own projects, right? Those are going to matter more in terms of getting qualified and experienced than any certification program will.
Final Thoughts
I’m not going to judge whether University is the right option for people or not. There are a ton of aspects to University that I haven’t mentioned, and there are a ton of unique experiences and opportunities you’ll get if you go to University. (Of course, there are also lots of different routes you could take instead.)
However, you can get a free University-level education from the comfort of your bedroom and without going into a ton of debt. You can do this for intellectual reasons, professional reasons or for any other nefarious scheme you may have planned.
As always, it’s just a case of breaking down what something does and recreating it yourself.
P.S. I can go into more detail if anyone is interested. Learning techniques and psychology are a hobby of mine. As always, let me know in the comments.