Student or apprentice?
Students nowadays have it hard: they to study more and they don't have time to dive deep into anything they study. Moreover, they can't even always evaluate prior to committing. Simply because the field is so vast that by the time they realize it might not be for them — it is too late.
Higher education is important, but most of the time not as a career but in the same way we read literature or study history in our leisure time. To broaden horizons of our thinking.
And of course, with generative tooling it is so tempting to take a shortcut, undermining your own learning in the process. It is a complex issue.
But I had a thought: what if current tools could act somewhat like a mentor? Of course, they make mistakes and then there is an issue of not knowing what you don't know.
Still, it is much better for a curious mind to have a 24/7 counselor which you can ask anything, and which could guide you through your first steps.
Simply to discover what you would need to know. Acting as a bootstrap. And after that, you can figure it out on your own — looking for people in groups related to your new topic of interest.
I wonder if a more widespread era of apprenticeship is upon us...