Why do I pay for college classes when I have to learn everything on my own?

It's a good question and one I wonder almost every day. Take my math class for example. Class is every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. My math professor provides learning resources the day before each class, these include Khan Academy videos to learn the material, Knewton Alta to practice, and a Canvas quiz to confirm what we learned. This all seems fine until we get into the whole thing.

First, Khan Academy is great, I can watch the videos and understand why Mr. Khan is teaching. Then I can review what he just taught so I can make sure I learned everything. After getting through all the videos my professor provided I'm feeling good, like I know the material. So it's time for practice.

We head over to Knewton Alta, a website filled with math. My professor can assign topics for us to go through and do practice problems. After completing about five from each topic the website says good job and you are done. Now let's say those five problems were not enough for me, I still need to understand the material better. Luckily, Knewton has a button just for that. So I press the keep practicing button and go through a few more problems. But after a couple problems I start to notice a strange occurrence, I am getting problems I already did. From what I can tell Knewton Alta has like ten practice problems before it starts looping, I may be wrong but this is what seems to be the case from my experience. So good thing I bought the textbook and can learn from there.

While going through some problems in the textbook I noticed some things Khan Academy did not teach. So it's a good thing I decided to look at the textbook or else I would not have learned that. And most students don't even have the textbook because the professor provides a pdf version.

Now that I am feeling confident in all the math we are going to learn in class I feel there is no need to go to class because I have already learned everything. But, I figure if I'm paying for the class I better go even if it seems pointless because maybe just maybe I'll learn something I had missed.

This is where the story gets even more interesting.

I arrive at class a few minutes early, because I have nothing else to do with my day, and I am handed a packet of practice problems. Now I do not immediately begin to work on them as I am waiting for instruction and a lecture from the professor. The lecture never comes. Instruction comes. The professor tells us that we should know the material from the day before when we learned it on our own and now we just need to practice. Seems like it totally makes sense however it would be nice for the professor to attempt to teach us as we are paying for that and it will help get the material in our brains better. But the professor does not. So I begin to work on the practice packet they handed out at the beginning of class. And something feels oddly familiar. I come to realise that the packet I am working on is the exact same Knewton Alta question from the day before! The professor just printed out the problems I already finished! So I do the problems quickly because I mostly remember the exact solutions from the day before and leave when I am done because that is what the professor told us to do. You may be thinking, "Well Andrew, why don't you go to the professor to ask if you did everything correctly and that you know what you're doing?" And to that I say, "Good point, however I just did these exact problems yesterday and I know I got them right because Knewton Alta said I did."

So what was the point of going to the class? I received no information from the professor and just got assigned the same problems from before. There was no benefit to going to this class, or paying for the class at all. The only thing the professor did was gather together a couple Khan Academy videos and some practice problems. And this is not a one time occurrence, the whole reason I'm writing this is because I'm fed up. This is pretty much now every single "lecture" goes. And it makes it very hard to want to keep going and showing up to class. Again I feel like I have to go because I'm paying a bazillion dollars forthe class and ifI don't go what'sthe point. I could literally have ChatGPT or Google Gemini or even my mom gather some videos and practice problems for me. I could even do that myself! Seriously! What isthe point of paying for college!

Well I will continue going to the "lectures" because I should and I really have nothing else to do with my day so I might as well.

Also I would like to note that throughout this writing I mention that I am paying for class, I'm not, it is my dad (gotta give credit where credit's due) because I am lucky, love you dad thanks for everything (you too mom).

Peace out.

Shout-out Nickolad Strength and Tara y'all my goats.