Seems like there's an emerging paradigm for ignoring universities but still doing something of value in the "academic" space. This is just a dumb strategy but based on many examples I've seen recently.

1. Customise a curriculum engaging with younger tutors in niche areas (e.g. youtube, teachable or if theres others comment). 2. Do this for a few years and make sure to meet people/do appropriate things and publish them online. E.g. do a good podcast/lecture series. 3. Publish on Xiv like sites with high quality results/arguments/original ideas or demo/explain things on youtube. If a preprint site doesn't exist for you then make one and contact people.

This might get you x100 the exposure of your average PI and eventually funding will come around to your ideas as universities become a total farce. 10 years down the line the tepid overtures to gitlab and github turn into a full on rejection of high overhead university education. Rental or pooling services for expensive equipment or access to resources would also help immensely.

Castles in the sand!