It’s far too late for me, but I was curious if there are folks out there who, in lieu of spending a lot of time and money on college (and likely ending up with a relatively useless degree on top of student loans), devoted that time and energy (and a relatively small amount of money) to self-study of Japanese and other subjects they otherwise would have paid tuition for.
I don’t know anyone specifically who did this, but I’ve seen comments to that effect over time. It’s great that one could cheaply and easily create their own Japanese language curriculum as an alternative to college classes using WaniKani and other low-cost or free resources and, if dedicated, “finish” their education in a couple years and start a career using that.
Granted, while I can envision how to do it now after being years into my own journey, I’m not sure I would have known where to begin with regard to setting up my own “curriculum” when I got started (nevermind that there were very few resources at all beyond textbooks when I was in college)…
But anyway, anyone done/doing that themselves, or know someone who has?
I don’t get it. College and WK have two very different goals. College doesn’t replace WK, and WK doesn’t replace college. It’s like saying “Who has, in lieu of buying a Ferrari, bought a vegetable chopper instead?”
You should absolutely go to college. Degree’s aren’t useless (speaking as someone without one as an adult). Even if you don’t use the degree directly it puts you at huge advantage in the labor market. WK doesn’t.
Ha! As soon as I posted, I was like, “Hmm, someone might take this as anti-college”…but I figured, oh well, happy to clarify if necessary!
I love college. I would literally still be in college if I could have justified the ongoing time and monetary costs. I learned so much, not just the course material, but about myself, learning in general, etc.
However, except for someone planning to enter a profession that requires a specific degree, knowing what the long-term costs and benefits will (likely) be, it’s not a good investment economically, at least in the US currently. It’s a great place to learn…while racking up bills that can take literally decades to pay off without any guarantee of an income to offset that.
Now, if college is free, that changes the equation dramatically. But college isn’t for everyone. Even though is valuable, everyone needs to do their own analysis for themselves.
Ostensibly the goal of both is learning. For someone interested in learning Japanese, college can be useful, but probably unnecessary, and WaniKani and other resources are, I would argue, more practical in terms of time and money.
MOOCs (massive online open courses) provide good on-line courses (Udemy is worth checking out for Japanese).
Along with WK there are many other great digital resources, some free, many much cheaper than old style 3rd level education.
Bricks and mortar universities provide a learning environment with networking, learning together, face-to-face, motivation, certification, curated curriculums, reputation, etc. and a plan and timeline.
The new on-line stuff is well worth checking out as a supplement or alternative, but it is: apples and oranges.
What kind of degree are you thinking? Learning japanese is not a degree as far I know. Linguistics for example is. But you study more than just Japanese and you get the credentials to work in the field after graduation.
There’s a lot of talk about going to college vs self study in tech. Companies will hire people without a degree if they can show some competence, because the demand is still higher than the supply. Not all companies though.
And in other fields it’s not the case. If the job requires a degree you can’t usually come in without one. Maybe if you have a different degree and some work experience.
"More recently, the blog has narrowed to ask: what’s the best way to learn?
This question has formed the basis of much of my later writing because I believe learning is the key to living well. This pursuit has even led me to take on two year-long experiments in learning: The MIT Challenge, where I attempted to learn MIT’s 4-year computer science curriculum without taking classes, and The Year Without English, where I went with a friend to learn four languages in one year."
He has interesting stuff to say and is far less of a snake-oil salesman than others in this area.
I would highlight the African proverb:
if you want to go fast, go alone;
if you want to far, go together.
I’m sort of doing this, or at least I’m allowing myself to focus on learning Japanese (and also translation) for several years without trying to look for a job, basically treating it like being in college. No idea if it’ll result in actual job opportunities or not, but I realized I needed to switch careers after the pandemic sort of permanently changed the field that I had just gotten a master’s degree in (librarianship), and a frustrating job experience taught me that I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to work in libraries…
I also hope to have a secondary focus on writing, which has always been my actual dream career, but I’ve never been able to produce the level of output I need to have a chance of making it work as a career (largely due to school and other stuff taking up too much energy for me to devote myself to writing).
Ideally, I’ll get to a point where I can start making some sort of living as a freelancer doing writing and/or translation. I have no illusions about how easy it’ll be to make it in either field, but I feel like it’s worth trying.
I’d say that I’m having mixed success. My Japanese is slowly but surely improving, and my ability to translate stuff is as well. I haven’t been doing as much writing as I would like to be doing, but global circumstances forced me to suddenly have to devote a lot of energy to activism instead, so I’m forgiving myself for not doing much fiction writing because my energy has been going to something more important.
I have just under two years left of the time I had allotted myself to study Japanese without having to worry about making money. I suppose I’ll reevaluate after that and see what kinds of paths are open to me.
(I feel obligated to include a disclaimer that I’m only able to do this because I have a living situation where I don’t have to worry about paying rent or purchasing my own food. It might be a different story if I had to also balance this with a real job.)
I’m definitely not doing things the most efficient way, haha. I’m satisfied if I can move up roughly one JLPT level every year of study (I’m currently between N3 and N2). My current study plan right now is mostly just immersion paired with vocab mining in Anki. I figure if I just do enough of that over the next couple years, I should get decently far along.
I know a number of folks with degrees in linguistics, Japanese studies, Asian studies, etc. I think those would be closest to a college-free Japanese self-study using WaniKani and other cheap or free resources.
Yeah, I have experience with that, as well as knowing a lot of folks who’ve made the jump between fields. While it used to be the norm that you couldn’t get a job in a field at all without a related degree, that’s really only still the case is specialized fields (e.g. medicine, academics, etc.) or at companies that are still stuck in the 20th century.
Indeed, while there’s certainly more flexibility now (modern companies generally require any bachelors degree or equivalent years of work experience), it depends on the field and its regulations and domain demands.
Since I’m talking about about studying Japanese (which one can take college courses for, study on one’s own, or some combination of the two) with WaniKani as an alternative to college as a point of comparison, it’s apples to apples, no oranges required.
Thanks so much for sharing! Library Science can be applicable and valuable in a number of fields, and it seems to me that in the age of “AI” and general information overload it may become even more important.
This is actually exactly what I had in mind when starting this thread:
No shame in that. It sounds like you’re really making good use of the opportunity. If I were starting over now, and was able to, I’d be doing something similar.
I would say it’s more like saying “Click bait versus college” instead of “independent language learning versus college” so it’s not like apple and oranges more like apples and fruit salad.
On a more serious note, I agree with @WaniTsunami さん：getting a degree is essential. WaniKani is a great helping tool, well worth its price, but if subscribing for WK would mean being unable to go to college – then it would be best to choose college
I minored in Japanese in college and am now using WK to pick up kanji and vocab that we never had time to cover in class. I learn well in a classroom setting and I am thankful that we learned so much grammar in those classes. I’m not sure another setting or learning method would have worked for me. I see WK has a complement to that, because like I said we didn’t get too far with vocab and grammar. I’m able to understand so much more now because I know what more of the words mean.
In terms of cost, yes I paid private engineering college tuition for those classes, but we were required to take “humanities” credits anyway so I chose something I really wanted to learn and fully enjoyed it. You could use an online course for less money, but the personalized instruction from our Sensei was a great experience. I even went to Japan on a short study abroad organized by my college after finishing the minor.
But although those may involve a need to study and use a foreign language, the language learning is not the primary focus – the academic field of study is.
The kind of institution that offers classes that are purely “learn a language” and which a self study approach including (but obviously not solely) WK would be closest to is a language school. That is a very different beast from a college or university, both in what it studies, how useful what you learn is as “transferrable skills”, and how any qualification you get from it is regarded in the job market.
I did a part-time Diploma in Language Studies at my university (mostly to put off having to enter the real world), and it was primarily language courses, plus a single culture course each session. (Or was it one each year? I don’t recall.)
I started doing TextFugu and Japanese for Busy People on the side for extra study, and was fairly surprised by how much they tended to run in parallel. WaniKani didn’t come until after I was finished.
The confusing part is, they shut down Textfugu because they were building Etoeto. Now that Etoeto is confirmed dead, they have no intention of resurrecting Textfugu. But they still entice new users by saying “Try the first season, free”.
Same. If you’re going to study it anyway, go to college. Get the credit, make a network of colleagues (you never know when that will come in handy, either.)
There aren’t a lot of jobs who will seriously consider you without the degree, and even the ones who will (like if you know someone personally there) will use it to justify paying you less.
That’s not even considering the degree also guarantees a broad familiarization with all kinds of other things. Like being able to make, support, and communicate a logical argument in writing - useful in any job. Just one of thousands of examples.
I hire both college graduates and people right out of high school with specialized training. Each has an advantage over the other in certain things but not other things. But I still pay the graduates more. Otherwise I would never get any
I’m doing ok for myself, can’t complain at all, but I’m nearly topped out at this employer. There are only a small fraction of the jobs above my position that I’m not outright ineligible to even be considered for. And a few more I would have to take a couple of steps back to get into a different specialty to earn the “experience” to justify even my current pay grade (although I could then advance another step or two).
It’s just a pain in the ass not having a degree. Even when everyone knows damn well you’re perfect, they aren’t allowed to hire you. Get a degree if you can.
Logically that makes sense, but in my experience, I haven’t found a statistical difference across degree/non-degree folks: a large percentage of the population just can’t cut it when required to, say, make a verbal presentation or write a proposal, and the only way to know who is who is to find out. It will probably skew more one way or the other depending on the industry though. Certainly in academics the degree (pun intended) of schooling required means that the folks who make it through are more likely to be marginally better at speaking and writing than the general population. Your mileage may vary though.
That really sucks… I hope you’re able to find a better path forward. It’s a jungle out there.
It really depends on the field, and, more importantly, the company. The job market is still a pain in the ass for nearly everyone though, even after it seemed like things might be improving a couple years back due to supply/demand imbalances. And, honestly, while it’s true that there are still a lot of companies that won’t hire without a specific degree, I’ve found that those are generally not places I’d want to work anyway. Gotta pay the bills though. 🩵
For someone interested in learning Japanese, college can be useful, but probably unnecessary, and WaniKani and other resources are, I would argue, more practical in terms of time and money.
