zlacker

Socializing, learning to live with others, providing opportunities to join social and professional clubs/organizations, navigation of longer-timeline projects and assignments, etc.

You could call all of these 'education' but the usual and implicit image of education in people's minds is lectures and tutoring sessions so it's worth highlighting these other aspects. All of these are present in universities around the world in varying degrees.

>>uoaei+(OP)
> Socializing, learning to live with others, providing opportunities to join social and professional clubs/organizations, navigation of longer-timeline projects and assignments, etc.

These are all things that happen in universities, but they are also all things that young people have the opportunity to do outside of university.

>>nicobu+T7
Technically, narrowly, yes, fine, but having environments that foster those things is much better than living in a desert and having to build those communities yourselves. Many will not have the "opportunity" in the latter case because there's a million other things that come up all the time. It's about reducing friction in accessing those benefits.

The old adage comes to mind: "you loved your college years because you lived in a socialized infrastructure with walkable neighborhoods and the opportunities for spontaneously meeting old friends and new people alike".

>>nicobu+T7
>young people have the opportunity to do [this] outside of university

Same goes for computer science and like every humanities degree - you can become an autodidact in any subject that does not require expebsive equiment and facilities.

On the contrary, > 60% of most people's lifelong friends consist of people they met at school or university. That suggests we are not very good at connecting eith random people we meet on the street.