The certification is what you need. But to get it, the university can require you to purchase a whole bunch of very expensive education you may not need.
Only by separating the two will this problem be solved: having certification authorities that are independent of educational providers.
In that utopia, even a regular university can't grant you the certification. They can market themselves as the best and most cost effective way for you to reach the competency needed to achieve your certificate. But, perhaps MOOCs are better, or intensive library study, or perhaps you're already that competent, and don't need any education to get there.
It is only that which can solve the scandal of indebting vast swathes of young people by tens of thousands of dollars.
So I'm suspicious of this article, because the solutions described still make the same mistakes. The body that provides you with the education, certifies you as having had that education. Okay there may be more evidence as metadata, but still, the incentive is there for providers to bias their certification towards the educational products they want to sell.