If you’re looking for a self-check of your level of knowledge, online courses very often include such exams on the material.
If you’re looking for accreditation or a fully-equivalent degree to a traditional university, I don’t think this is sufficient. Exams, and even knowledge they test, are not the entirety of what a degree signals. It’s arguable that the other things (ability to put up with bullshit, conscientiousness, some amount of participation and work with other students, actual thesis papers, etc.) are not actually super-valuable, but the desires to have them remain. These will be expected to be bundled with credentials called “university degree” for a long long time.
Probably requires a lot of conscientiousness to self-study for those exams. I’d be fine with thesis papers remaining part of what you need to submit for the degree. But yeah, seems likely that “ability to go through university as it currently is” remains an arbitrary criteria that is maintained.
If you’re looking for a self-check of your level of knowledge, online courses very often include such exams on the material.
If you’re looking for accreditation or a fully-equivalent degree to a traditional university, I don’t think this is sufficient. Exams, and even knowledge they test, are not the entirety of what a degree signals. It’s arguable that the other things (ability to put up with bullshit, conscientiousness, some amount of participation and work with other students, actual thesis papers, etc.) are not actually super-valuable, but the desires to have them remain. These will be expected to be bundled with credentials called “university degree” for a long long time.
Probably requires a lot of conscientiousness to self-study for those exams. I’d be fine with thesis papers remaining part of what you need to submit for the degree. But yeah, seems likely that “ability to go through university as it currently is” remains an arbitrary criteria that is maintained.
Yeah, from what I remember Bryan Caplan talks about this in his book The Case Against Education.
The ability to put up with bullshit is valuable: bullshit cannot be ignored once it is reified into real world objects, documents, habits.