My point is there's a bunch of non-hackers which also spend a good amount of time helping others to learn. There are quilting clubs, and hiking clubs, and bee keeping clubs. Some of these organizations are over a century old. There are science cafes, and book readings, public lectures, and temperance organizations. I don't think hackers are notably more organized than other skillsets.

For example, near where I live are two rowing clubs, both with their own clubhouses and storage areas. I used to be a member of a tango organization, with its own membership structure and bank account. It would organize events, and bring in guest teachers. And so on. What is special about hackerspaces?

> What physical resources do you need to study such subjects?

Are you asking me because you don't have any experience with those programs, nor have any friends who participated in them? If so, that would suggest a large gap in your understanding of how colleges work.

A music program will have a large range of instruments, including large instruments like a pipe organ and more exotic instruments like a gamelan (and people who can build/maintain/tune the instruments), practice spaces, and performance spaces. An art program will have equipment ranging from paints and brushes to kilns to welding equipment and perhaps even a foundry. Some of these require support staff. A theater program will have performance spaces, costumes and props, plus again support people (eg, a licensed carpenter for stage building, someone to oversee the electrics, etc.)

This is not something that every small town will have, which is why people go somewhere else where those resources can be concentrated.

> Do you think organising practice space and meeting likeminded individuals would be hard outside college?

Umm, yes? That's my point. In my town of 70,000 people, there probably aren't enough like-minded individuals interested in, say, early medieval music. Certainly not enough to have the instruments on-hand. While "[t]he Early Music Institute at the Jacobs School of Music [at Indiana University] provides a comprehensive program in the study of historical performance on original instruments of music before ca.1800." (See http://www.music.indiana.edu/departments/academic/early-musi... , which also points out that commuting faculty and students "makes it difficult to offer such a well-rounded educational experience and to have major ensembles of such caliber".)

Or take the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, which has "theatrical spaces outfitted with state-of-the-art intelligent lighting systems to animation studios equipped with the latest 3D computer graphics software." How does one get access to that sort of equipment, and put on a play which uses it, in a hackerspace model?

> why pay huge sums of money for that privilege when it's possible to arrange in a more straightforward way

You've changed the topic. You originally said "Colleges offer five things (from an academic point of view)", while I said that physical access to peers is a sixth.

Physical peer proximity, in the hackerspace model, is hard to arrange for many subjects. I studied physics. There are some 5,000-6,000 physics graduates each year. (See http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201112/backpage.cfm and http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2008/04/13/the-extr... ).

How does one establish a "physics space" when there are so few others in one's immediate neighborhood who are interested in learning particle physics? This seems like a prime reason to concentrate physics studies in one geographic area, and have people move there to study and to teach. In other words, college. Isn't that more straightforward than what you propose? (If not, how would your model be more effective than what we have now?)

I feel when you said "I'm sure that makes learning more fun" that you didn't get the point. This wasn't for fun, this was peer education. A few years ago a friend told me "I don't think I could have graduated without your help." And I know myself well enough to know that I do better with physical proximity than telepresence. There are educational benefits of learning with peers.

Focusing now on "why pay huge sums of money for that privilege".

That's also a different topic, and you didn't bring it up earlier. I agree with you - college should not cost huge sums of money. I think higher education is a social good and should be supported by the state, either free or highly subsidized. Where I disagree with you is the idea that hackerspaces provide a more straightforward way than what we have now, which includes geographically co-located studies, and colleges with a strong distance learning component like the Open University in the UK.