Conrad if you wrote a book about this I would buy it. Super fascinating stuff. Colleges are clearly massive financial instruments that need to be analyzed further.
Building alternatives to universities that are driven by grass-roots movements are the perfect way forward here. Home schooling, MOOCs and startup businesses are some of the developments that have started diminishing the need of expensive degrees.
As long as there's a need for degrees as a signal for baseline competence/barrier to entry, it seems those needing it will be at the mercy of the systems that provide it.
The signal is valuable. The unnatural barrier to entry is, at best, unethical.
Ideally, the barrier to the opportunity to earn the credential would not exist. It should be available to everyone worldwide.
Individual research positions should be applied for. Certain practical skills must be taught in labs, etc. But the vast majority of intellectual effort in a Harvard degree should already have all its coursework and testing available to everyone, and at reasonable cost. Otherwise it is not an open competition, it is an institution promoting socioeconomi status.
That may or may not be why some of the elite schools open up their courses but not their accreditation online. It may not be in the institutions best interest to be as open as the ideal you describe.
Its crazy! Over time the tax advantage could make university endowments (as well as wealthy religious entities) the largest owners of capital in the world, along with sovereign wealth funds.
I'm not focused enough right now to put a book together -- although I agree that there is more to be said on and around this specific topic. Some good nuggets are in this comment section -- as is usually the case for HN.
The essay format allows me to spend a month writing an essay about the intersection of Game Theory, Anime, Military Strategy, AI, and Political Economy without stressing about any grander narrative, which I very much enjoy...