To Uni, or Not to Uni, That Is My Question¶
I didn't go to university. It took me over a decade of professional life to discover something that I wanted to study. I'm now on my second career as a self-taught software developer.
I have proven to myself that I can make it as a developer without formal education. But I am left wanting more. It's not about money: I don't think six years of a part-time degree would produce a monetary increase that I couldn't achieve through professional experience and grit in the meantime.
This dilemma has played on my mind for a while now. I want knowledge. I want to identify unknown unknowns. I am attracted to the structure that education provides. But I don't want the financial burden of university — I especially don't want to pay for modules I have essentially obtained through personal study and experience.
An idea began to grow: could I do this on my own? 
A quick search on eBay confirmed I could obtain second-hand materials for Open University modules and other university-level textbooks are available for purchase online too. Large Language Models such as ChatGPT are potentially good-enough for my needs as a tutor/professor.
Are you saying we don't need professors anymore?
Just to be clear, AI cannot currently replace the expertise and wisdom of an experienced university professor. Perhaps one day. But not today. AI is, however, at a point where it can provide additional insight through investigative conversations, and confirm understanding through targeted Q&A sessions.
I created my own GPT. I instructed it to behave like a CS professor and guide me to answers rather than regurgitate facts. I can even give it photos of pages in books and it will generate questions to test my comprehension! As I learn more about configuring GPTs, I will be able to improve its effectiveness.
Next, I just needed a curriculum. I used Open University as my baseline to linearise topics. I compared their various Computing & IT pathways and chose the most relevant modules for my career plans. Most of these modules have reading material available second-hand. I then used resources such as Teach Yourself CS to identify additional materials to study. I spent some time deciding how deep I would go into each topic and disregarded a few recommendations that I felt would be overkill for my needs. I created a three-stage curriculum.
Then I began to diverge from the typical university pathway. I began to include books considered by most to be must-reads for anyone working with code. And I fit them around the structure I had already defined.
But there are so many non-technical skills that compliment a career in software: leadership, finance and business to name a few. So I created a fourth stage to capture these additional skills. This stage is unstructured and designed to be studied as and when I desire. If I need a break from data structures, I'll study business or leadership. Why not?
I published the whole curriculum on my website and called it The Self-Taught Degree. Each "module" has a tick box next to it so I can track my progress. I imagine it'll take me years!
Knowledge for its own sake is futile. It needs a higher purpose. Yes, it will make me a more competent developer, but there's also an opportunity here. Considering my "Self-Taught Degree" will lack the status of a formal qualification, I need to prove my competence another way.
So as I progress through each module, I shall do what any good student does: I'll take notes, converse with "Professor GPT", summarise content and rewrite it in my own words to confirm understanding. And then I will publish it all online. My website has been designed to become a hub of knowledge as I go through this process. Being a resource for both myself and others on their own self-taught journey.
What a world we live in. Access to education has been a barrier for the individual progress of humans since time began. Those days are long gone. Now it's a matter of grit.
Watch this space.
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