suffering through a 4-year philosophy program to obtain the degree is not always a pleasant experience; believe me, ive done it. a lot of the time there isnt too much to learn from the professors, but there are always one or two really good profs that make up for that. and if you take the research into your own hands, you can end up learning far more on your own buried in a book or with the free online access to a wide range of phil journals.
but that being said, experiencing academia first-hand is still very important if you aspire to a more complete understanding of philosophy, or to becoming a writer or author. despite its shortcomings, academic philosophy degrees expose you a little to the professional side of publication, to the world of peer-reviewed journals, and to the boring, cut-and-dry routines and standardized practices of an institutionalized system. yea, the system sucks, but you need to at least have a working knowledge of it if you aspire to write at all someday.
trudging through most of the coursework is sort of a depressing necessity… but it builds up the groundwork of basic knowledge and writing/research skills that will later grow into deeper understanding and a more instinctive ability to dive right into the world of journalistic professional publication. of course, you always get out of something what you put into it; in that sense, even the negative experiences can be rewarding, if you use them to help refine and verify your beliefs and concepts. so to a certain minimum extent, “playing the game” of academic philosophy is sort of necessary to get off the ground at all and get a basic general understanding… but other than that, im sure a dedicated reader and thinker could gain plenty of wisdom and insight into any area of philosophy just by going to his internet browser and typing “www.google.com…”, or walking into a public library.