What do you want to achieve in life is basically what this all boils down to. You didn't go to collage / university but some want to understand calculus, organic chemistry, etc. Learning by yourself is completely impossible in higher levels of education as buying million dollar machinery isn't really in the grasp of a single person.
A valid point. I'm just not so sure that higher levels of education are providing state-of-the-art machinery. Often outdated - at least in my admittingly vary narrow perspective.
Nevertheless, access to equipment shouldn't be the defining element in an education framework.
