For my field (3D art/ games), there's a lot of debate over whether it's worth your time because most of what you learn on such courses you can learn with YouTube or industry subscriptions like Gnomon Workshop/ Artstation Pro which are pretty valuable resources and I tend to agree on that one - everyone on my course who has done well are the people who spend a lot of time learning online without the help of tutors and who don't rely on lecturers to teach everything.

What I've found valuable though in my course was the fact that the university was able to give me access to PCs and software I would never have been able to get at home (Maya, Zbrush, Substance etc) and a lab building in which to do work (my room at home is too small for a PC to fit). That, plus being around a lot of people who wanna do the same stuff as me, events done for industry talks and such and all that kind of thing. While I don't doubt being at home I could learn the things I learned, being around people doing the same thing as me every day for the past three years has done wonders to boost and focus that learning into areas I would have never learned about otherwise. Most people start off in game art like "I wanna make guns" but eventually find out they're more into general hardsurface, character, VFX, material or environment production roles - a lot of areas are which you'd not learn about easily if just left to your own devices.

For my uni additionally, they do quite a few group projects where art, design, programming and animation guys have to work in a group project to make a game, during one of which I worked as the Lead Artist for my team, which meant a lot of learning how to organise and lead group projects on my end. A lot of the experience I gained working in those group assignments is the kind of thing I'd never have been able to get if I were working at home, and it's the stuff that I feel will probably be of massive benefit when I eventually do end up working in industry.

My case is kinda special in that I don't do a very academia subject (my degree has essentially just been semesters of being given a project and a deadline to do it, then just having weekly check-ins along the way to check progress) so I don't know if that kinda thing I just said is much applicable to more traditional study courses, but I know a lot of my friends in the games courses have felt the same way. The most valuable things we got out of uni were the resources and opportunities that we would never be able to get at home.

I resent British higher education, but not for the academics and the work they do. At least in my department, relations within and with the faculty are incredibly good.

There are, undoubtedly, some things which institutionalised academia is good at doing. But, to be honest, I really do think if you know how to engage with the field you’re in (in my case reading primary and secondary literature) then you can make a decent enough job of it yourself, if the goal is personal fulfilment rather than accreditation. Although this will depend on your learning style, I’m not somebody who gets all that much from lectures and note-taking anyway.

Also, it will have the effect of meaning you will probably need to get most of your resources illegally unless you want to go bankrupt. But, let’s be honest, who cares about that?

I never finished high school for starters. Everything I know of today I taught myself how to do. But if you're asking on what has more value? I can't give you a definitive answer because it's entirely dependent on the individual's capacity to learn, and what they're learning. I can highlight some points on the differences between the two. Academia, on paper, is designed to skip the process of self learning. For instance. It's taken me eleven years to understand the principles that I currently do in artistic mediums. Where I to take acedemia(assuming I landed the correct school), I could entirely skip this process by learning from the masters and what they know outright.

Or, for another instance, it's likely not possible for me to teach myself how to become a molecular biologist, or a chemist. I could learn the basic principles but I would not have access to the more advanced networks, information, and technology to help me learn. Most importantly, the right kind of teacher can streamline the learning process and remove learning barriers.

The downside to college and other higher forms of education however, is that they focus on monetary gain(a source of income for the learner rather than a passion) and they are monetary traps designed to close on today's youth. Society does place too much value on degrees, but only because most of society sees monetary acclimation tied to the word degree. I find that most people never go to college or university with the intent of interest. They go because they're interested in making money from some field that's "promised" to generate it. Lo and behold we arise to the trap. Oversaturation of fields and jobless graduates which college and uni's will shed no tears for, only bills and interest rates. University and college can be worth it for more advanced fields, but so long as it costs an arm and a leg in some countries, they aren't worth it. Education should be free.