Why I distrust institutional education mechanism

1) Lack of diversification
 
    Often I wonder how university students live after they graduate;  many students are simply interested in obtaining their "paper" and nothing more.   Their knowledge is limited, if any after the final exams, to area of specialization.  Many of my friends do not know how to install computer softwares, how to hook up telephones nor do they know how to write in English.   Sometimes I ask: what are ur interests ?   The answer:  going out with friends.    I expect the answer to be something different from my perspective/culture; flying, going to movies, playing and listening to music, investing, volunteering, coin or stamp collecting and many more.  However, I find that I cannot expect the answer to be like this nor do they think about their interests this way.   Personally, I find that this situation is very sad and the students are not "creative."    This "narrowed" thinking or approach to their lives is mainly caused by institutional educational mechanism where:
    - school education seems / is to be boring, and getting out of this boresome is to go out with friends; they are not interested in "studying" anything more because "education" is really boring;
    - getting a paper "seems" to be necessary to succeed in life (especially for work);  so the goal is to get a paper, not knowledge -- students study at the last minute before the exams and they forget everything afterwards;

2) Danger of lack of diversification

    Students are required to "specialize" their knowledge and often this leads to a misunderstanding of "excluding" knowledge from other domains that may be of importance to their specialization (i.e. physics, chemistry and computer science for biology, advanced mathematics and computer science for economics, international politics and computer science for finance to name a few), and "convergence" of domains is becoming more evident as the time passes by.   Students' knowledge with "a diploma" is often useless unless they keep themselves updated with their own fields as well as learning other domains by themselves due to a fact of the domain convergence that's in place.   Many students are not willing to take this fact and learn by themselves simply because:
    - learning by oneself is useless;  having a paper worths a lot;
    - our society is not ready for such individual education nor is accepted in lieu of "the paper system";

3) Our society system that excludes individual education, outside of institutions

    Usually this does not harm many people due to a fact that many people are not interested nor do they wish to learn (or cannot learn or not willing to learn) educational materials by themselves.  However, how about those people who do educate by themselves such as me (http://www.tdwaterhousebank.net/license.htm) by reading books (and taking appropriate certifications) ?   I can convince myself that I have already done a work that's equivalent to at least master's degree.  However, this type of education system that requires a great deal of self-interest, self-motivation, self-confidence and self-esteem is not often accepted in our society as a means of learning mechanism.
 
4) Why I distrust institutional education mechanism ?

Here are some examples that either I have experienced or I have seen:

    Considering reasons 1) to 3), I personally find that institutional education (i.e. university education) is useless to me who values something more than a paper, who values self-interest, self-motivation, self-confidence and self-esteem.
 
McGill University (1) - My own Experience, http://www.tdwaterhousebank.net/mcgill/
 
McGill University (2) - National Post, Monday, December 11, 2000, p.A3 "McGill Failed Me - I was Mad as Hell"
 
Author planned massacre | University considers legal action over former student's plot | Lawyers for McGill University are examining an unpublished manuscript by Nega Mezlekia, the Governor General's Award winning author, to assess the possibility of legal action over the formal engineering student's chilling plot to massacre several professors and senior administrators. ... [picture] Anne Stone provided a copy of Nega Mezlekia's manuscript to McGill University.  In it, Mezlekia describes a plot similar to one carried out by academic Valeri Fabrikant, above right, who killed four people at Concordia University in 1992.  In the end, Mezlekia changed his mind.  ...  THE MANUSCRIPT | ... the [McGill] administration clearly failed me.   I could not take the university to court;  ... I would be against the university's string of salaried lawyers; the case would be bogged down from the first ... The PhD was no longer at issue, what I wanted was respect. ... I could not allow them to understand my silence as cowardice.  I was mad as hell and wanted to teach them a lesson. | I had to plan my course of action very carefully.  I had learned in Ethiopia that you could not face an enemy of such enormity, occupying such a vast territory, without a well thought-out plan.  ... I had to insure that no one suspected.   I never confided my plans to anyone, nor did I make open threats; after all, barking dogs seldom bite.  |  I planned to carryout the attack on or after the 14th of December for three reasons: in the first place, the students would be out of school and no bystanders would be hurt; in the second place, the date was close to the winter equinox so it would grow dark early, allowing me to move easily from building to building without being traced; and finally, the snow and slush would slow down the approach of the police.  McGill University is centrally located; at any given moment the police were a mere two minute drive from campus.  In summer, there is the additional problem of motorcycle patrols who could easily slide through the traffic and abort my plan.  According to my calculations, and rehearsals, I needed approximately seven minutes of uninterrupted time to carry out my mission in the department alone. ... The hit list consisted of six people in the department, and all higher university officials I could find.  The plan of attack was as follows: I would make anonymous telephone calls to establish that the individuals on my list were in the department, and that most of the important figures in the administration building were present.   ... the Colt hand gun fitted with a silencer ...  My decision to take the law into my own hands had never been impulsive, but very deliberate.

National Post, February 27, 2001, "Police to Investigate Professor's Resume"
 
Taught Engineering Without Degree, Regina Claims | The University of Regina will ask police to investigate an engineering professor it says taught for two years without the degrees she claimed to have.   ... for a possible fraud investigation of Lana Nguyen, who resigned just over a week ago amid allegations she falsified application records to indivate she carried graduate and undergraduate degrees.  ... "We regret the inconvenience ..." ... "I can take reasonable steps, for example, to keep my house from being burglarized.  But if somebody wants in there, he'll be in."  ...   that students had begun to complain about the ceontent and usefulness of her courses -- something not uncommon ... discovered after a routine performance review two weeks ago, in which supervisors detected discrepancies in her background documentation.  When the young professor was hired in 1998, she had claimed she held a bachelor's degree from the University of Ottawa and a PhD from the University of Waterloo.   Subsequent investigation by universities revealed that she had obtained neither;  indeed, she had provided the name and student number of a Hien Nguyen for the purposes of background checks -- a holder of the engineering degrees who is a man.   Greg Forrest, who took three classes from Ms. Nguyen in 1999 and 2000, described her lectures as awful.  "... she just walked in and started writing on the board," ... "She didn't say a word. When people started complaining, she tried to explain stuff, but she couldn't because she didn't know what she was doing."  ... seeking an apology, compensation for their lost tuition and compensation for troubles wrought by Ms. Nguyen's inadequate instruction.  "I needed these courses for my job and graduate studies," ...  "I didn't learn the material I needed to learn."  ... students needing credits in software engineering had no choice but to take Ms. Nguyen's courses ... university... stopped short of issuing an apology.  
 
5) My published articles in student campus newspaper.

2000-2001 Bishop's University
 
October 5, 2000: Bishop's University Unfair?
October 19, 2000 issue : Men Oppressed, not women
January 25, 2001 issue: Confidentiality in question ? (my university threw out students files which I could have access to information such as social insurance number, birth date, transcript, signature and such... there were about 30 files)
February 22, 2001 issue: When dogs attack!