A Boring Dystopia

My experience from an R1 university (research focused) is that most of the professors didn't primarily want to teach, but instead to focus on research, while teaching was what they did to make their salary. They were usually happy to teach a few courses, and especially upper level courses focused on their area of expertise, but the main goal was getting funding to pursue research, and that usually comes from (or is distributed through) some public institution.

It wasn't so much about the money so much as the enshitification of the services we provided. They basically treated people like cattle, and I didn't like it. They often cut programs that actually taught meaningful technical knowledge and skills. The tipping point was how my last Uni dealt with the pandemic. The bare minimum quality of online courses was one issue, but a bigger issue is that most courses were still required in person. I did the math and figured that by opening at full capacity that some students would die as a statistical probability based on age demographics and trends in outbreaks for the area at that time, and it was a special kind of soul-shredding to participate in a system that indirectly murders the youth who would lead us to a better future.

But maybe I'm just a wuss, idk.

Free Form Schooling, at least in the USA, lacks federal accreditation and therefor students would not have access to federal aid including Pell Grant, Subsidized Loans, and Unsubsidized Loans. So the students would have expenses with no income or they would have to pay high taxes on income during their schooling. If you're interested in trying a local college for an Associates to get your feet wet, then fill out the FAFSA online and you'll see roughly what aid you qualify for, usually enough to get by depending on the rates of the schools you chose.