Good article. As someone who was essentially self-educated for most of my adult life it makes a great deal of sense. Despite being "gifted" I hated school though I loved learned. I graduated in the bottom quarter of my high school class, and only attended jr. college for about a year-and-a-half before dropping out - I only went back to school twenty years later for the marathon run that resulted in my shiny new doctorate because I was tired of doing the other things I'd been doing (worked in the trades as a carpenter for about seven years, retail managment and purchasing, and a short stint in corporate site/account management, and a whole slew of basic odd jobs).

I don't regret any of it. I learned a great deal about people, about myself, and I kept reading. At my Catholic university the professor was amazed not because I could have tested out of their Western Civ class, but because I could clearly have tested out of it with the specific focus they had rather than just a generalist perspective. My lit teacher, was happy to let me into the Lit degree's capstone course despite none of the pre-req's because I obviously knew what I was talking about and ended up contributing more to the discussion than most of the Lit majors.

Bah, college is a series of hoops to jump through for the piece of paper. Education comes from engaging in subjects and learning. These two things are not always related...