Not every university is MIT.
If your lived experience differs, maybe you should explain how, rather than dismissing mine out of hand.
The other utility is networking. That one I didnt do so good with.
Personally, I like the pay to test and prep suggestion. Would have worked great for me and I would not have had to deal with vindictive professors who graded me down for not attended their awful lectures even though there was no attendance grade.
I wish people wanted the intellectual experience, but I had to do a second major in the liberal arts to even get a hint of that, and even then people really weren't that invested.
Now, I didn't go to an Ivy League school, but it still ranks pretty well nationally.
So indeed, the end cert doesn't quite matter so much as going through the process.
> is to learn a universal method of acquiring knowledge
It's about learning how to think. Acquiring knowledge and solving problems are two different things. Caltech is about the latter. Like learning how to build a rocket is not the goal, it's about figuring out how to build a rocket.
Given tempus et mores, I made a friendly amendment.
If, however, the goal of higher-education is profiteering off the citizenry, then your model would prevent those profits from occurring.
Which model do you believe the US follows, education, or profiteering?
The answer is unsurprising and able to be gleaned from financial statements, and enrollment data alone.
There could be a better system here, of course: for example if MIT offered a pay-per-exam for everything they released as open coursework and stood behind the accreditation. It doesn't have to be 1:1 for credits either, as an exam may not be representative of lab work when lab work is present.