Higher Education

I recently re-watched Good Will Hunting (one of my favorite films) and there is a great scene where Will Hunting is arguing with a Harvard student. The student is trying to catch out Will's friend when he is pretending that he attends college there by asking him his thoughts on certain economic principles. Will then proceeds to point out that every bit of information the student has quoted is directly out of a textbook and asks if he has any original thoughts of his own or whether he just enjoys going to bars to regurgitate information and pass it off as his own. He then says this great quote "See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fucking education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library".

This pops into my head today as I have just received my course profiles for all my subjects. For one of the subjects, in the learning activities section, it lists all the topics covered and the relevant textbook readings. I've included a copy of it below:

Topic 1: Introduction to Economics. Reading: Chapter 1

Topic 2: The Market System - Demand and Supply. Reading: Chapter 2

Topic 3: Elasticity, Taxes and Price Demands. Reading: Chapter 3

Topic 4: Costs of Production. Reading: Chapter 4

Topic 5: Profit Maximisation. Reading: Chapter 5

Topic 6: Market Structures. Reading: Chapter 6 & 7

...

Topic 12: Globalisation and International Trade. Reading: Chapter 15

Now I'm aware that most university courses are modeled from textbooks but this is the first time I've ever had a course that was literally just reading a textbook from start to finish. This really just slams in the point that the majority of what can be learnt (for a commerce degree anyway) from university could be got with just a library card and some focus. Also what this means is that the $3,000 course fee is simply just buying a certificate of proof that you have read the entire book... and that seems a little expensive.