Given that they used to be meaningful, I don't see how abolishing them is better than just figuring out how to make them work like they used to.
Would employers accept that and consider it fairly when judging against their grade-inflated predecessors? I doubt it.
And if the employers actually care about the grades, they'll learn about the change too. (But that's a minority)
In 2019 Germany, tens of thousands of pupils protested against what they thought were hard math tests on the "Abitur" – the last exam in school before university. Bad grades there would worsen their chances to secure a spot on a prestigious university or a desireable subject of study against pupils who got good grades from the old regime. (Or, if the next exam was easier, even against the next age cohort!)
That's the thing. They weren't for most professions. Even for the professions that do require abstract theoretical knowledge, it's debatable how much of the degree itself was actually meaningful vs it just being easier to use as a long weed-out process than a set of exams.
They were mostly a status marker. Pre-WWII, colleges were almost entirely finishing schools for the rich and networking opportunities. And they also ran research because being a patron of the sciences has been high status for ~700 years.
There's also an argument about universities being useful for society, as they create well-rounded citizens. That argument may have some validity, but it's unclear why that was put in as a prerequisite for having a generic corporate job.
They were also excellent proxies for IQ, which employers aren't allowed to discriminate based on this side of the 70s. My guess is that companies dropping degree requirements means this correlation is breaking down. The only way to make the degrees meaningful in that sense again would be to stop granting degrees to low IQ people.
And really opens the question of why this should not be part of education every citizen gets? Surely what 10 to 12 years should be enough time to get everyone capable to this point.
It is pretty sure that degrees simply were filters. At least outside some degrees where there was job specific knowledge that saved lot on training that could potentially fail.
I actually wonder with AI and LLMs and such will we soon see every application contain some type of generated test that applicant will have to fill when sending job application. Just so they can filter people and possibly even ignore oversaturated degrees in process.