Kio rocks. She is the future. And she is hot in that East Village sorta way.

What is interesting about her approach is that if someone simply wants to learn a subject, and especially if that subject is in the humanities and possibly social sciences, one learns from reading (I don't think you can train in some sciences and medicince this way -- I sure as hell wouldn't want a self-trained doctor).

What is lost is the communications with experts in the field, faculty, fellow students. Also access to resources like libraries. Even with electronic library access, one needs to be able to read peer-reviewed journals, which are mostly gated.

Interesting though. The point is clear. One can learn if they want to. But I think universities still matter, and I can't imagine many other people besides her landing teaching gigs with her credentials and self-taughtness.

It seems to me that this is a story of somebody leveraging their social capital, and not actually doing that well in the end. What is more, it is hard to believe this is a replicable strategy (how are prospective employers, en masse, supposed to determine whether self-taught MA's meet their standards).