Universities, self-education and anarchism

I think that, though it is lonely and difficult, having the confidence to teach yourself things to a professional level is far more valuable and important than a course.

Sure, except that a) thats a much more difficult way to learn things and b) in most of the world at least the main reason people go to university to secure higher education (or in-general any education) is because of the qualifiation at the end. Sure, you are capeable of teaching yourself a professional skill, but no-one is going to hire you on your say so.

I suppose it's about unlearning the seductive propaganda surrounding "qualifications".

Its... only partially propaganda, a great deal of the requirement for higher education is fundamentally bunk, the jobs most people do have nothing to do with what they studied, and there is that meme that "what going to college actually prooves is that for 4 years you were able to show up on time and complete a series of tasks that were given you" I am skeptical that thats the reason for this superfluous requirement. However, qualifications are important, and I bring this up because you talk about trying to follow anarchist principles - and there is nothing "non-anarchist" implicitly in the usage of qualifications (such as through professional bodies) or the requirement that a person have them before people seek them out to do certain tasks, for the laziest example - is an anarchist society just going to accept someone is a surgeon on their say so allone?

This is esspecially mindfull since you state

if you want to to X, you choose a course for Y, etc.

In which case, qualifications are definately not propaganda.

Regardless of that, we're dont live in anarchy, we live in a capitalistic world order. Sure, many people can make it without ever having gone to higher education, but similarly there are pleanty of people more than capeable of doing jobs which they are turned down without a thought just because their application doesnt have a degree on it. Is that wrong? Yes. Is you not going to uni going to change that? No. Is possibly hampering your future wellbeing a wise course of action based on trying to follow anarchist principles.....? No not really.

I'm not going to tell you what to do. But if you are thinking of avoiding a higher education based on anarchist principles you may do well to reexamin your thought process.

/r/Anarchy101 Thread