As Richard Kennaway said, there are no essences of words. In addition to the points others have already made, I would add: Alice learns what the university tells her to. She follows a curriculum that someone else sets. Bob chooses his own curriculum. He himself decides what he wants to learn. In practice, that indicates a huge difference in their relative personalities, and it probably means that they end up learning different things.
While it’s certainly possible that Bob will choose a curriculum similar to a standard university course, most autodidacts end up picking a curriculum wildly different. Maybe the university’s standard chemistry course includes an introduction to medical drugs and biochemistry, and Bob already knows he doesn’t care about that so he can skip that part. Maybe the university’s standard course hardly mentions superconducting materials but Bob unilaterally decides to read everything about them and make that his main focus of study.
As Richard Kennaway said, there are no essences of words. In addition to the points others have already made, I would add: Alice learns what the university tells her to. She follows a curriculum that someone else sets. Bob chooses his own curriculum. He himself decides what he wants to learn. In practice, that indicates a huge difference in their relative personalities, and it probably means that they end up learning different things.
While it’s certainly possible that Bob will choose a curriculum similar to a standard university course, most autodidacts end up picking a curriculum wildly different. Maybe the university’s standard chemistry course includes an introduction to medical drugs and biochemistry, and Bob already knows he doesn’t care about that so he can skip that part. Maybe the university’s standard course hardly mentions superconducting materials but Bob unilaterally decides to read everything about them and make that his main focus of study.