Tailoring Your Own Education

I am a firm believer that we can learn on our own.

I started to wonder why do we need universities in the first place???

Universities existed for a long time.Nalanda university in India can be compared to MIT in the present world.The methods of teaching have come a long way.Now a days with open source text books and lectures available online we can equip ourselves with greater amount of knowledge.

But real life problems cannot be solved alone.We need to connect with people who have treaded the path before.As Scott Berkun says in his book "The Myths of Innovation" ,the lone inventor has to stand on the shoulders of earlier inventors.Most of the time its not a lone inventor...But a bunch of people (hundreds of people) working towards a solution.

We have to build our lives in a world which is filled with people who have different ideas.IQ alone cannot help anyone.So a degree in any profession can be helpful if we are lucky.

I am indeed very grateful to few good professors I had met during my undergraduate and graduate courses.(Even though there were few ,who made my life a living hell)

The input from people you work with is such a important factor in our lives.