I gave College the ol' College try - unfortunately I found many of the same issues with it that you did. In the years since, I have continued my education on my own terms, and through my own means - for those who wish to learn, but who have little concern for the piece of paper awarded to graduates, I cannot reccomend Archive.org and LibriVox.org enough. Archive.org (which you are likely familiar with as the owner/operator of the Way Back Machine) has hundreds of thousands of out-of-copyright (and sometimes out-of-print) books freely available for download and review, and Librivox.org has audiobooks which are likewise freely available. I cannot begin to tell you the joy I feel when I listen to a recording of Herodotus's Histories or Cicero's Philippics against Marcus Antonius - the sheer quality of the writing, if nothing else, is deeply rewarding. Once, long ago, I was a big fan of the History channel - I remember the two hour doccumentary they produced about 15 years ago on Alexander the Great. I can honestly say that I learned more about the life and times of Alexander through ten minutes of Arrian's Anabasis that I did during the entire doccumentary - and both were more informative that what I was taught in school or university!

Perhaps with math, I can quibble with you - but even there I am not sure that the approach taken by most universities is necessarily the best.