Northwestern students blocked from enrollment after refusing controversial antisemitism training

You have a very poor understanding of how to learn history and what historians do professionally. I only have a history minor but know several professional historians. What you're describing is a historian hobbiest. Ironically this misconception is one that a lot of people clear up by going to college.

What information are professors giving you that you can't get anywhere else?

A reading list and critical analysis.

Because an autodidact will end up reading the ‘good’ books and not reading the critiques or counter-narratives. An algorithm feed will serve you the consumable content that keeps you engaged, not the information that you need to sit with to digest and re-examine what you thought you knew to be true.

You gain the most understanding during the un-learning and analysis process. Reading one book won't do that. Hence, a reading list.

What information are professors giving you that you can't get anywhere else?

None. The value-add that good schools and curriculums provide is curation of information, and presenting it in a time-efficient way. For a practical demonstration of the value, try learning Linux shell scripting only from man pages.

It's not about the information itself. All of human knowledge is at your fingertips. Unfortunately, that knowledge is buried under an ocean of bullshit. And if you haven't studied in a field, you likely cannot tell the difference between quality sources and bullshit.

You bemoan a course that consists of studying a textbook, but how do you even know what textbook to read? If you do not know the field, how do you know that it's an accurate work of reliable history and not some right-wing slop like PragerU? And it's not just reading the book. It's knowing what parts to read, preparing writings, participating in discussions, and a thousand other activities that are designed to advance the learning objectives of a course. Hell, just having a course with a fixed schedule to it can be immensely beneficial to most learners. Studying is hard. It's time consuming. And it doesn't generate any immediate returns in your life. Most people who try to teach themselves a subject end up learning less in five years than they could in a single semester of enrolling in one or two college courses. When you're teaching yourself something, it's far too easy to just put off the hard dull work til tomorrow or avoid it all together.

For the love of god, without looking it up, do you even know how to pronounce the word pedagogy?

If you had taken even a single course in education or course design, you would know there is so much more to designing a course than simply reading a textbook. I've taught and designed numerous college courses. If you think it's just a matter of reading from a textbook, you are standing atop a mountain of ignorance.

Listening to you talk, maybe it's where I learned humility and how not to make sweeping generalizations that make me look like a moron but who knows? I'm just a brainwashed college educated drone.