IMO a solution the higher-education issue both in terms of cost & acceptance is to force any public or publicly funded school (i.e all of them just like Title IX did) to:
1. Offer all undergrad classes online, without capacity limits , and at a lower price. [1]
2. Degrees are awarded on some tiered scale (instead of the college's name?).
3. All student outcomes are published including % that get a job within 6 months & average starting salary.
4. Most classes can be passed/skipped via an exam of some sort.
5. All amenity/building costs are optional or part of the in-person price.
Certainly lots of students prefer or say they prefer small, physical classes but if the online cost is 1/10 of the physical price then you can prioritize which classes you prefer in person vs online.
The cost breakdown would be like this:
* ~$200 to take the class online or ~$2000 to take it in-person.
* ~$50 to just take the exam.
If you take 8/10 classes online and take 1/10 as an exam and 1/10 in-person; then you save ~82% ($3,650 vs $20,000). This puts the cost easily within a summer job.
The tiered scale would probably just be putting the GPA on the degree. (It will never happen but I think it would be good if the degree lacked the school's name and school's would not disclose if the student attend that specific school.)
This would be a drastic change but the current system is extremely biased to the kind of student/person that schools like for their 'culture'. We essentially have an Instagram version of education that's pay-to-play and pay-to-win.
The counter argument is always that college is about network effects that can only be accessed in person. I think this is absurd since a good portion of students don't have the luxury/desire to build those connections. In undergrad, I bet it's less than 5% that benefit (but those 5% benefit a lot). In any case, schools shouldn't be using admission requirements to boost their schools reputation. e.g taking Calc 1 at a Ivy school isn't very impressive besides the fact you are at an Ivy league school.
There are certainly a lot of other issues to resolve. Schools would hate it because they couldn't be prestigious simply because they are very selective and wouldn't be able to spread costs around between colleges/classes. Professors would hate it because they would have to have an online class (which they seem to hate). Etc.
[1] Obviously lab classes cannot be 100% online but in this the student should be mostly free to take the class at any physical school. A titration lab is still just a titration whether it is at MIT or the local community college. Even STEM programs are made up of mostly lecture classes. And obviously there is an upper limit per class/semester but it's probably like 10x the current class size.