>>14292588Different people learn differently.
Some people will be able to be entirely self motivated and tear through a semester long course in a couple of weeks with a higher level of comprehension than someone who sat through the whole class. (These types are somewhat more common on /sci/, and have a massive superiority complex)
Most people need some form of structure and guidance to motivate that level of learning and so they are not very useful, maybe good for getting a basic level of understanding of an advanced field or to review topics they've studied in the past.
If you're in the second group which most students are, people in the first group will talk to you like you're a worthless retarded piece of human garbage for not being like them (at least they will on 4chan or reddit, they don't really go outside). However, it's more important to be honest with yourself and do shit you can handle and that works for you than try to match the standards of some autist on the internet.
Of course if you're interested in getting a job or participating in any organized research you'll need to get a degree as institutions do not have the time to examine every applicant and determine if they're the 1% who actually bothered to learn the free open course or the 99% who bullshitted it, they contract that job out to the colleges and make you pay for the degree to confirm that you learned anything.
