system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
In your opinion, is it possible for an autodidact person to obtain an undergraduate level of knowledge by reading textbooks?

Hello,

I am a graphic design student who's also interested in subjects like history and philosophy. If I wasn't majoring in graphic design, I'd be majoring in one of those. However, it also occurred to me that I could simply buy the textbooks used in the classes for those particular degrees and teach myself that way. There's also free and open courses from places like MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc. that could supplement my learning. I have no interest in credentialing myself in either of those fields; I just want to learn. Do you think that I could roughly obtain the same level of proficiency over the subject matter as an undergraduate through self-study alone? Thanks!
gpt
Yes and no. By reading textbooks and studying diligently with an eye to existing tests (maybe subject matter GREs?), you could probably memorize a fair bit of stuff. By using the bibliographies of the textbooks as direction, you could read a lot of key primary texts (which is crucial, because these are not textbook-driven fields).

What you can't do solo is engage in the conversations, based on close reading of primary sources, that would shape you as a thinker. A university isn't the only way tl do that, of course, but it's one of the most efficient and reliable.