Suppose it does. I wonder how many of us there are then, shivering in the intellectual wasteland outside the ivory tower, our passion for the life of the mind the only thing keeping us warm.
Life is hard for the independent scholar.
Access to a huge, well-stocked library. Think for a minute about having to do your research and write your papers using only the city's public library. Even the books you'll want will now almost always be inter-library loan requests. Access to a photocopier. Sounds like a trivial thing.