Comments by "Black Cat Dungeon Master\x27s Familiar" (@blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311) on "Soviet Storm review, German Strategy 1942, History Education and more! 9 random questions about WW2" video.

@TheImperatorKnight I've got bachelors and masters in both engineering mathematics and history. I disagree that any of it was a waste of time or money. Studying history formally has some big advantages over just reading history books, it forces you to question your assumptions, read different points of view and opens up large fields you didn't know you should read about otherwise. Might depend what universities though - for me, it was Open University and Dundee for history. Excellent tutors for the most part who show you where you're wrong and what you're missing. That's what you're paying for. You just don't have that if you're learning on your own. BTW for context, I did history purely as a hobby with no career benefits other than improving my writing skills and possibly improving my ability to structure an argument.
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TIK is unbelievably arrogant for someone who has pretty narrow knowledge, yes his videos about particular battles are very good especially Stalingrad. But how can someone seriously believe that you can't model human behaviour? Individuals behave differently as individuals and individuals are individually unpredictable yes that's true but collectively, humans behave according to certain patterns. If they didn't then throw out ALL of the social sciences and economics and psychology. Not just the crap bits, all of it.
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@thewatchman9540 Theoretically yeah you could read any of those books outside of university but I found the whole thing really interesting and helpful for many reasons including the feedback you get from discussions and essays, not sure where you'd get the same quality from outside a university. I did two history degrees as a hobby without taking significant time off work but yeah I agree with you if you're going to spend years doing it full time, that's a big opportunity cost. I'd say if you really, really want to be a professional historian, it's worth it. Though also it might depend what university you're at too. My daughter is now doing first year at Edinburgh which is meant to be a good university but I have to say I'm not too impressed with what I've seen. Anyway a lot of people nowadays are going to university as a place holder and not taking it too seriously. I completely agree with you (and TIK) that's a total waste of time.
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