Universities should be more than toll gates

I am always astonished by the range of people who claim their college degree was useless, citing rote memorization and bad classes. I had an entirely different experience and so did most people I know. University gave me the opportunity to talk to world-class researchers during office hours, to discuss ideas with my peers and have them either validated or critiqued by experts. Sure, all the information is available online (which is a miracle into itself) but without frequent contact with professors and mentors I wouldn’t have even known where to look or what existed in the field. University, for me, was a place where I was apprenticing full-time under highly experienced people, surrounded by people my age who also were doing the same. Years of self-teaching didn’t get me anywhere close to what a few semesters of expert mentorship got me. I never felt I had to memorize anything: exams consisted of system design or long programming projects or optimization challenges. I loved it, and I’m not sure if people went to different universities or just didn’t take advantage of the opportunities presented to them.

> University gave me the opportunity to talk to world-class researchers during office hours

Neither world-class researchers or office hours exist in most Universities.

"Office hours" is entirely an American (and maybe British?) thing.

That’s not true. Source: University of Warsaw. Poland. Not Illinois. I’ve had office hours with world-class mathematicians. Those office hours were required of every lecturer and TA.