Originally Posted by filtherton

Actually, no. At least in the more sciencey areas of study, part of pursuing a master's and/or phd is doing research with facilities and financial support from the university and faculty. The knowledge and experienced that can be gained from this is in many cases considerably greater than the knowledge and experience that can be gained from a familiarity with google and wikipedia. Unless you happen to have tens of thousands of dollars for buying equipment and know some really smart people who don't mind taking time out of whatever they'd rather be doing to help you understand things you don't understand, then going to grad school to learn the things one commonly learns in grad school is a lot more doable than going it alone.