Or instead of independently reinventing the wheel while living in communal apartments we could just choose to learn from people smarter than us who have already invented the wheel. I'd rather spend an hour of my time learning reductions from a really smart person than four hours independently stumbling through the problem. Indeed, the more complex the problems get, the less likely it is that the problems are even solvable independently. Seems like you are trivializing the process of learning. The time savings I get alone from having access to professors is worth the cost of tuition. Not to mention the research opportunities.
I do agree with you; I was just taking the idea that "the value of attending university is in the connections you make" as assumed by the root of this thread, since I inevitably see that comment be used as a summary of these discussions. That idea implies that, if you don't care for the connections, self-teaching or learning in industry is somehow "good enough." And that thought implies that you could get the same connections, and therefore the same value, by just shacking everyone who would be attending the university together and letting them simmer in their own intellect.
While it's probably true in the marginal case—the 10x increase in tuition to go to an Ivy League school certainly doesn't cause a 10x increase in education, but it may well cause a 10x increase in connectivity—it's false in the general case. To simplify that: some university is good, but more university is not necessarily better. And you could probably get all the learning you wanted from just having your "apartment building" hire lecturers, and establish a good working relationship with professional research institutions (supposing most of the Ph.Ds, displaced, would end up working at Bell-Labs-like places.)
