If no one has mentioned it yet - I think Dogen (he’s on YT and focuses on Japanese pitch accent) did the traditional college route, but started self-study in his early teens, and then moved to Japan. If I remember correctly, after going to college and moving to Japan he realized that he didn’t know as much as he thought and kinda struggled at first. So, he compares and contrasts college vs self-study in one of his videos and it was really interesting.
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I would like to add that “learning Japanese” doesn’t equate to WK per se. It would be interesting (to me, mostly) and illuminating to see what a college major in Japanese includes. Learning vocabulary and reading/writing (with kanji, hiragana, and katakana) but also grammar and conversational skills which are not included in WK.
My assumption when I started WK was that learning how to read Japanese would be an onramp toward learning more vocabulary and grammar, kind of in the comfort of my reading chair. I assumed this based on my childhood when I enjoyed my Dr. Seuss books, comic books, etc. After a time I realized that my assumption was mistaken. After all, Japanese children already know their language. Like native English speakers, learning to read is more about translating the characters on the page into the language that we know and, sure, picking up more vocabulary and concepts as we go.
The point of this is that we each need to define what “learning Japanese” is for us. And that comes, I think, from understanding one’s goals and aspirations.
I am very happy to have found WK and studied it for awhile. I learned a lot but I’ve moved on to studying grammar and conversational Japanese — which is super challenging. Someday I will return to WK to kind of round out my education and learn how to read it, which will be enhanced, I think, by having a conversational ability and a foundational understanding of its grammar.
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I think this varies a lot depending on what you want to do. Certain vocations do not require a degree, and it would be a colossal waste of time and money to pursue one if you wanted to say, work in IT, plumbing, journalism, etc, and don’t want to study for a degree for the sake of the subject.
That being said, I would personally include (modern) language study in the list of things I don’t think is a good idea to major in.
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This reminds me, to add to my above comment that I suspect the need for a degree varies between countries.
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Most universities these days have course summaries online. Here’s what the four year course at my local university covers:
- the actual language, including listening, speaking, reading, written composition and translation both into and out of the language
- history, both wider East Asian history and more specific Japanese history
- study of Japanese literature in English translation
- Japanese politics
- Classical Japanese (grammar, vocabulary, texts)
- some basic linguistics
- Japanese society studied from a sociology perspective
- a year studying in Japan
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Thank you. To me, that shows that a (probably “the”) fundamental part of the course is to be able to communicate in Japanese which is, for me, what I’d like to be able to do. As much as I enjoy Japan’s culture and history I’m not sure that would be enough for me to major in that course of study.
I’m thinking it would be hard to predict what careers this degree might enable. Academics, sure, but that can be similar to majoring in acting or music, no? Given how Japan’s population is in serious decline, maybe the sociological knowledge gained would provide insights into what much of the industrialized world is only beginning to face if at all.
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I like to treat my studying like a college course in Japanese lang and culture. I know someone who teaches another “difficult” language through Krashens style of lots of reading and engagement in texts. I have a stack of graded readers, parallel readers, supplementary books (Japanese Power series from Kodansha), and a lot of academic books studying Japanese culture like “Diva Nation,” “Modern Girls on the Go,” “The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan,” and the like. I sometimes teach women psych classes so I like to start investigations of any topic, in this case Japanese history (which is so broad and vast) through the lens of women’s issues as a good way to start branching out. A lot of Japanese games and media have a lot of historical focus (like Taisho era games and the whole Haruka series which covers the Genpei War, Heian period, Sengoku era) which are really interesting but wide in scale.
In terms of schedule, I don’t keep things terribly strict like a college syllabus. The best I can do is stick month to month in my study blog and see how I’m feeling at a given time.
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While language studies is a less desirable degree, it still shows potential employers you were able to commit and complete a multitude of tasks with a high(er) degree of comprehension. While I might be in fact better at Japanese than someone with a degree in it, employers will favor the degree more as it communicates a level of dedication and vigor that passing a JLPT exam does not.
Of course if you are looking at careers that are Certificate intensive like IT, sure college might not be the only way but what I stated above still applies. It’s just seen in higher regard for what comes with the college education.
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Though my intent here was mainly actually learning the language just as a practical matter for oneself (rather than certification, etc.), those are all really great points! 
In the end, without a degree, JLPT, etc. there’s not really any “proof” of the extent of my studies (to someone who doesn’t know Japanese from any other “foreign” language, so “demonstrating” will be meaningless). But I’m happy so long as I can communicate effectively in order to make my way through daily life, be productive, etc.
That said, the one thing I am missing almost entirely without formal education is writing… Technically I took a Japanese class, but that was so long ago and so very basic that I don’t think it counts for much at this point (and yes, I could absolutely work on writing on my own, but it’s very low priority; whereas I would have been required to learn that too as part of a college curriculum).
While hiragana and katakana are easy, I can only imitate kanji due to having a general understanding of stroke order and radicals, after looking them up on my phone; there are very few I could legitimately write from memory. I would like to focus on writing someday, but…I have a lot more of more practical importance to learn first still. 
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Go to college/university whilst you have the opportunity, you can study japanese at any stage of your life. You can study Japanese whilst you work the job that college helped you obtain and if you ever wanted to do JET programme or similar, you need a degree to get onto it.
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