The fact that Musk is so intelligent makes his opinion on this particularly worthless. Very intelligent people know how to learn on their own without structure. Also,. they would find the pace and level of typical college instruction tedious and below their current level of knowledge/skill b/c it is targeted toward the average and not exceptional intellect.
The fact that Musk is too self-centered and narcissistic to realize that he is especially unqualified to speak to this issue just shows that general intellect and specialized knowledge isn't the same as being self-aware and able to recognize one's biases.
A recent meta-analysis of 71 studies shows significant pre-post gains in general critical thinking skills during college. They also showed that the more college years between the pre and post tests the larger the critical thinking gain and faster rate of gain in later years. The most conservative index of the gain was a .46 Standard Deviation gain, which is quite large (more than twice as large as the gender difference in math skill).
Also, the idea that a college course doesn't increase knowledge in that domain is quite simply moronic. Exposure to information is a necessary precondition for acquiring that information. College course expose people to far more information on a topic than most people would be exposed to in that timeframe otherwise. While students can not put in the effort to deeply learn all that info, they'd have to deliberately try to avoid learning not to acquire some knowledge or skills they didn't already possess (unless they are too smart to be in that class). In addition, the information is vetted by experts and generally excludes most of the mountains of nonsense and invalid information that would drown-out the valid information if most people tried to sort through it on their own. There are numerous studies showing that most people are quite terrible at identifying and selectively utilizing the more valid and reliable information on a topic when left to search for it on their own, and this leads to forming objectively inaccurate understanding of concepts in science and history. And the testing and assessments also matter. Not only do they provide evidence that the student engaged in some minimal processing of the provided information, but
numerous experiments show that testing itself increasing understanding and retention of the material
Plus, courses provide the opportunity to both observe and engage in critical thinking, comparative theory evaluation, and construction of a reasoned argument. While crappy teachers just present the current conclusions/facts in a discipline, better instructors model reasoning walking students through the reasoning process, critiquing presented ideas, encourage discussion and debate, etc.. Granted that happens more in the smaller and more advanced courses than 300 person lectures.
Yeah, you can skate through college without putting in the effort and not learn very much. But those people won't learn very much on their own either, b/c it shows they place no intrinsic value on learning unless their is some short term payoff. And yes, grade inflation or more importantly lack of grade variability is a problem and we need more pressure on instructors to at least give as many Cs as As, even if they aren't going to fail anyone who at least completes most assignments. But even with those problems, a degree reflects that the person was at least exposed to a breadth and depth of information that typically goes well beyond high school, and they jumped through hoops that require some minimal level of processing of that info. Test themselves are often not highly reliable indicators of acquired skills and knowledge. So, knowing that a person was at least exposed to the information and experiences that would have developed their knowledge and skills had they put in the effort is useful information.
