http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543
which seems to be well liked by other participants here. To relate what the research says to what Salman Khan is proposing, it is a widely replicated finding all over the world, for many categories of jobs, that work-sample tests based on actual job tasks do much better at identifying successful workers than higher education credentials. Any employer that doesn't want to be a chump should hire most workers on the basis of a work-sample test.
What an institution of higher education could do to respond to what research says about preparing learners to succeed in finding jobs and doing jobs well is make various work-sample tests part of a graduation comprehensive examination. Currently higher education degrees are based mostly on "seat time" (so that the saying is, "All you need to get a degree is a heartbeat and a check"), rather than on demonstrated competencies for doing any useful form of work.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_la...
A college or university that says to the world, "Our graduates who obtain our diplomas demonstrate their competence with work-sample tests, the results of which we list on their official academic records" would rapidly gain notice from companies with research-based hiring procedures. (And why would anyone want to work for a company with hiring procedures that are contrary to the best research?)
http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...
http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri...
That could provide the new college or university leverage to gain market share as compared to other colleges and universities. That would be enough for it to thrive as a new institution of higher education.
Yes, there are other reasons to go to college besides getting a job after graduation. But the research shows that many of those purported reasons are poorly achieved by current higher education practice,
http://chronicle.com/article/Academically-Adrift-The/130743/
and a new model of college or university might be able to do some outside-the-box innovation to also achieve better in that regard. Trying something new would not be a bad idea.