Personally I have always chosen the self learning path, only going to college to obtain the 'proof' for work requirements but have been very impressed with the recent MOOC offerings (e.g. Machine Learning, Model Thinking). The format is very flexible and works well for people who like the self learning path.

By the way, there is one benefit of a systematically fed knowledge -- it prevents you from getting into selection spiral, where you want to learn about something

This is a valid point, but each individual has different levels of understanding prior to starting, yet the content usually covers all grounding material meaning that many people end up with boring subjects.