Online learning is very isolated and individualized. It’s possible to learn a lot, but what you learn isn’t as often checked against social realities.

College is a social environment meant to expose you to different people, views, and opinions. Other people have learned similar things as you, but in vastly different ways. Seeing and learning how others understand a topic and negotiating to a shared understanding is fundamental to mastering a topic.

These social aspects of mastery and integration with the community are necessarily a bit inefficient, but you need them to actually make your knowledge useful.