I like my books, thank you very much. I've never felt fearful over my safety reading a book on the train. I've never had the sudden urge to put a book away lest someone try and take it from me. And it is still orders of magnitude easier for me to lend someone a book than it is to (legally) give them a copy of one of the many ebooks I own for a while.
In addition, I am currently at a (supposedly) top university in London. Everything in my lectures I could adequately teach myself with the books on the course, Wikipedia and Wolfram Mathworld. This isn't why I'm paying ten thousand pounds a year (roughly, including living costs). I'm paying ten thousand pounds a year to get an excuse to be around smart people my age for three years in London. I've met so many brilliant people in my time here and despite a brief period where I was almost committed to dropping out I ultimately decided otherwise (partly because I'd already sunk eighteen months and twenty thousand pounds into it, partly because completing it would only be another eighteen months and another ten thousand pounds plus a degree whose value may be questionable but if anyone can point out any downsides, considering the already large investment I've made, I'd be more than happy to hear them). I'd get none of these upsides had I merely done a bunch of online courses and read some books on maths and programming.
I think your post accurately describes the problem with education today. I, for one, hate paper with a passion. There is not one redeeming quality offered by it, from my perspective. Obviously you take the exact opposite stance, and, importantly, that doesn't make you wrong.
As you have illustrated here: Everyone is different, but our education system only serves a subset of the population who fit that particular mould. We don't need to destroy college, and in fact it is important to keep it alive, but we need to recognize that it is not the only game in town. The computer didn't eliminate paper, but it did give us choice. Choice, with recognition of achievement, is what education desperately needs.
