I find that doing a side project along with your day job is more of a psychological problem. You lose motivation knowing you can just stop your project with no real consequences. I think you need to make some sacrifices (maybe not quit your day job) in order force yourself to put in a lot of effort.
If you see things that way, then yes, DNA code is not very elegant or parsimonious. There are plenty of sequences that don't do anything (as far as we know).
I don't think we need to take universities away, just the unnecessary competition-induced crap that makes them so expensive. The "college experience" we all hear about can be done on a way smaller budget. And like you mention, universities probably aren't the best at it anyways.