A good writeup. But you downplay the role of individual attention. No textbook is going to have all the answers to questions someone might formulate after reading the material. They also won't provide help to students who get stuck doing exercises. In books, it's either nothing or all (the complete solution).
The current system does not do a lot of personalized teaching because the average university has a tightly limited amount of resources per student. The very rich universities (such as Oxford) can afford to give a training personalized to a much larger extent, via tutors.
Yeah. I've taught myself several courses just from textbooks, with much more success than in traditional setups that come with individual attention. I am probably unusual in this regard and should probably typical-mind-fallacy less.
However, I will nitpick a bit. While most textbooks won't quite have every answer to every question a student could formulate whilst reading it (although the good ones come very close), answers to these questions are typically 30 seconds away, either on Wikipedia or Google. Point about the importance of having people to talk to ...
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