A rough idea: Open Education

Something I have noticed about myself has given me an idea about an alternate form of education. What if you were given a large amount of resources such as access to books, classes, professors, and TAs and you were judged on your worthiness for a degree at a point of your and your adviser’s determining? So basically, you would decide what to study at all times. You could go to a lecture for two weeks, get what you want from it, and put what you have learned towards something else. You could do independent research and learning, and possibly go to professors and TAs to help you understand something or to guide you in the right direction.

I find that I learn best when I find something that sounds interesting and just see where it takes me. A lot of times I will find myself holding back on learning something that I want to learn because I know I have “classwork” to do. And the classwork is not particularly interesting so a one-hour assignment might take me four hours since I am constantly procrastinating. I am sure this idea has a lot of flaws, but I am just throwing it out there.