Soon enough, I will be getting my university degree. I'm not sure when (the website doesn't provide the actual date that I go and pick up the results). At this point, I am quite cynical about the university. 
In this country, it seems that we really don't need it anymore. The Internet and decent libraries has supplanted the need for universities. Autodidacticism will become the norm in the next fifteen years, because university education is slowly becoming an irrelevant distraction.
Frank Zappa said in the liner notes to Freak Out!: "Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read. Forget I mentioned it. This song has no message. Rise for the flag salute."
Hey, it worked for Leibniz!
I've thought long and hard about going back to university next year, but it's utterly pointless. Undergraduate degrees are now £3,000 a year over three years (to say nothing of living expenses), and postgraduate degrees an equivalent amount at their cheapest. What could I possibly learn from such a degree that I can't teach myself? I have access to the Reading Room at the British Library and a borrowing pass at the University of London library. I have Google at my fingertips twenty-four hours a day.
What is the point of formal education again? It serves the same role that television and the music industry does. It's presence is there to distract us from the reality that it's no longer really necessary. Of course, it will be required for people to become doctors and lawyers, but for everything else, what is the point?
What's really amusing is that what used to be considered fringe in 1970 is more feasible than ever today. Illich's "learning webs" are just a click away, as is Socratic dialogue, as is the largest encyclopedia ever created.
And schools are just becoming even more irrelevant than ever before. The parliamentarians are arguing over it like it's important or something. The fact is that it's teaching what adjectives are to 17-year-old's, and helping them perform basic geometry - and Excel, which is pretty much the modern equivalent of being able to do trigonometry.
The university experience is going to become like the movie-going experience. It'll be something that people do for the experience rather than for the substance, because, as with Hollywood, the substance has gone. Here's an example - found through Google, nonetheless - from the University of Central England at Birmingham - "University is about the next few years of your life". It's about experience. It's like reality TV.
Educational institutions that don't realise they are becoming Napsterised are deluding themselves. When Facebook launches a 'learning' application, you guys will be dead. 
