University and Pandemic

August 8th, 2025

I think I physically attended university for an average of less than 30 minutes a week, following full-time and in-person programs. Most of this was exams and project work, basically none of it was lectures. I just read the relevant materials and completed the exams and assignments, never really feeling like I was a proper student. Did I miss out? Definitely, but did I get other opportunities instead? Absolutely.

This is essentially my argument why you should go to university again.

Why this approach

Well I didn't pick this approach at all, just like happened to many other students, the pandemic moved everything online. And when it is online, the always incorrectly paced lectures (that is, a lecture cannot possible be at the right pace for everyone), become really easy to ignore. And if you replace it with self-study instead, the time spent per EC¹ drops significantly, opening up a lot of time for other things.

I just started doing other things with the time that opened up, and found no reason to start going to lectures or campus at all. And this has me wondering, even more than before, what are we going to university for? A proper answer to that question should probably come from someone qualified, that is, someone who actually went to university. But I can at least share why I didn't drop out (which was under continuous consideration).

Degree-effort ratio

A good reason to go to university is to get a degree (duh!), because people use it to select you for jobs, and even use it to determine your salary. But if that costs you 40 hours a week for five years or so, that is quite the time investment. Maybe if you manage to make those 40 hours a week productive learning you can justify that. But I think the degree-effort ratio is not sufficient in many cases². In the pandemic model of university though, this is not a problem at all! Just learn at your own pace, pass the exams and save on a lot of time and effort while still ending with a social class enhancing degree.

Career

I was lucky enough to start a job at the same time I started university, which means I got head start of multiple years of experience. To me, this compensates for the time spent in university by a lot, and makes it a very interesting proposition to get both a degree, experience, salary and study financing at the same time. This puts you in a great position by the time you collect your diploma(s), and you won't feel left behind by those who dropped out or didn't go to university at all.

Conclusion

When your university is still partially online, it is a great opportunity to get a degree while spending less time on it than you would traditionally. And you can cheat a little here — when attendance is said to be mandatory, it often isn't, and when you are reachable and proactive on group projects digitally, they will not complain at all. Personally, I did not like university at all, but at least I have no trouble with Advent of Code now.