To be quite blunt, most of their life is not a very long time.
I, too, had a good idea of my learning style and aptitude going into college. It has not changed all that much since.
What did change was my ability to use that learning style to link together fields, knowledge, information, and people that appear extremely complex and disparate on their own.
The world needs specialists, for sure, and perhaps you can level up your knowledge in the field of your interest by using books and web research. That's valuable.
If you really want to be valuable, do what no one else seems to be able to do right now: put everything together. Everything. Not just different parts of your own field, but throw chemistry and poetry and literature in there. How about music? How does that affect your work? What about history and philosophy or shoot, most importantly, psychology? How will you not only create great products, but also know how they affect people, and exactly what ways other people will think about them? How will you discover what people really need if you don't understand them on a basic level?
What about theology and philosophy? If you just rejected the possibility of their importance to your work, then you're not the kind of person I want to work with. Rejection of knowledge is already failure.
College, above all, gives you breadth and the tools to deal with it. Use that and you'll be ten times more valuable than even the best specialist.
Can you get that elsewhere? Maybe. Does everyone need it? Probably not. But I've never seen anything that kicks you out of your own head more swiftly or effectively than a good university—and that alone makes you better in my book.
Interesting. I suspect this varies a lot person to person - I'm thinking about Meyers-Briggs and the S/N divide here. I knew how to throw everything together from a very early age. I wrote one of my physics exams in rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter (you try rhyming ∇ · B, I dare ya :-)). I was making hanging mobiles out of the periodic table elements at 12, and my dad taught me how to balance chemical equations and graph exponential decay curves at 7.
What I didn't know how to do was put my nose to the grindstone and rigorously study one subject in depth until I learned all the dusty corners. I was very good at impressing people with off-the-wall connections and intuitions that they would never have dreamed of, but I couldn't finish my homework or solve textbook problems. I did learn that in college (but in an unorthodox way - by nearly flunking out).
But I can't help but wonder if this is a maturity thing and it would've happened without college. I actually felt that the greatest improvement in my ability to persevere and get through the boring things that weren't immediately obvious happened in the 5 years after college, once I got into the working world.
I, too, had a good idea of my learning style and aptitude going into college. It has not changed all that much since.
What did change was my ability to use that learning style to link together fields, knowledge, information, and people that appear extremely complex and disparate on their own.
The world needs specialists, for sure, and perhaps you can level up your knowledge in the field of your interest by using books and web research. That's valuable.
If you really want to be valuable, do what no one else seems to be able to do right now: put everything together. Everything. Not just different parts of your own field, but throw chemistry and poetry and literature in there. How about music? How does that affect your work? What about history and philosophy or shoot, most importantly, psychology? How will you not only create great products, but also know how they affect people, and exactly what ways other people will think about them? How will you discover what people really need if you don't understand them on a basic level?
What about theology and philosophy? If you just rejected the possibility of their importance to your work, then you're not the kind of person I want to work with. Rejection of knowledge is already failure.
College, above all, gives you breadth and the tools to deal with it. Use that and you'll be ten times more valuable than even the best specialist.
Can you get that elsewhere? Maybe. Does everyone need it? Probably not. But I've never seen anything that kicks you out of your own head more swiftly or effectively than a good university—and that alone makes you better in my book.