Proposal for an Autodidact’s Degree
“There’s never been a better time in history to be an independent learner.”
In the spring of 2023 I went to school to train as a mechanic; I touched on this in a prior post, “On the Margins”. Part of the way through my training I realized that the courses I was taking, combined with general education credit earned years earlier, satisfied the requirements for the associate of science in automotive technology. I petitioned and was awarded the degree in the spring of 2024.
I moved back to Salt Lake City that summer and learned that Weber State University, in Ogden, offers a relatively uncommon bachelor’s of science degree in automotive technology. I toured the automotive facilities, met the department chair and some of the faculty, transferred, and started working in the department’s Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Lab as a lab technician. It’s been a great learning experience.
Returning to school in my early thirties has been difficult but intensely gratifying. If you take the thing seriously, if you read the syllabus, do the assigned reading, and take the quizzes, midterms, and finals unassisted you come out the other side a different person. Not everyone is taking this approach.
I had a conversation months ago, at the end of spring semester, with a sophomore visiting our campus from another university. We were talking about finals we were studying for and I asked him what he was working on.
“It’s for a class on the Harlem Renaissance,” he said.
“Oh, so you’ve been reading Langston Hughes?”
“No, not at all. I just use ChatGPT for everything.”
For the final exam, a video recitation designed to prevent cheating, he read off a script he’d generated. He told me that everyone in the class was doing this.
“So what’s the point of even taking the class?” I asked.
“I just want the degree.”
I can understand this because I want the degree, too. But I want to earn it.
There wasn’t really a compelling economic reason for me to continue my studies beyond my associate’s. I learned the trade and now I work in it. The associate’s was a nice bonus. It’s true that the bachelor’s will make me a more desirable candidate if I choose to work for an automaker, a common path for graduates of my program, or if, likelier, I decide to teach at a technical or community college later in my career.
But that wasn’t why I chose to do this. I chose to continue because I want to learn as much as I can about how cars work. This has worked really, really well. That’s not the point of today’s post but I promise I’ll return to it later.
The point of today’s post is this: I want to propose a new kind of degree for people who are motivated by learning, an autodidact’s degree.
Here’s the idea: If you care enough about a topic you can spend a short period of time studying it and know more than someone who earned an undergraduate degree in that topic a decade ago and forgot most of what they learned. If LLMs are making university programs less rigorous it’s possible you may end up knowing more than someone earning their degree this year.
To earn an autodidact’s degree you’ll need to design and complete a program of study in the topic you’re interested in. You’ll choose the materials to study from and if you need help you can consult an LLM, either by querying what it’s got in its training data or giving it your learning materials and asking for feedback.
Look at distinguished academic programs that teach what you want to learn and emulate the parts that are externally visible. Many universities publish curricula, syllabi, and program- and course-level learning outcomes. Use those.
Be realistic about how much time you can commit on a daily and weekly basis and treat it like you would as a tuition-paying student enrolled at a university. Even if your program uses free materials you’ll pay in opportunity cost. Act like it.
Work through the program and assess your performance as you go. Grade yourself or have an LLM grade your work. Be honest about how you’re doing.
There’s never been a better time in history to be an independent learner. Pick something you want to be an expert in and earn your autodidact’s degree.