I don't know about other fields but I think if someone wants to really learn EE and stuff related to it, they don't necessarily need to attend university (except for some lab courses which I think are mostly useless). University IMO made me a bit more competitive student. Communicating with other students and professors also helped me learn a lot but most of the stuff I've learned I learned from books and other students' notes! I didn't attend most of the classes I took. I just read whatever needed to pass the course. Sometimes with excellent scores. All I'm just saying is it mostly depends on the person [and sometimes on the field of study itself I suppose.]

Like Scott said, in the UK there’s ‘The Open University’, which has been around for decades. You have to pay something for it, but you can sometimes get funding from the government to cover the costs. As far as I know, you earn real qualifications - exactly the same as if you went to any other college or university - and I’m pretty sure you sit the exams at an appointed time and place like everyone else does. Before the internet, there used to be Open University lectures broadcast on the TV - usually on the BBC late at night, presented by heavily bearded 1970’s hipsters wearing psychedelic ties and an abundance of brown corduroy. (Any British person over the age of 30 will know instantly what I’m talking about.) The film “Educating Rita” is about a thoroughly working-class woman (the type of person who would usually never have gone to university) gaining an English Lit degree through the Open University. (I must admit, this is where most of my knowledge of the OU comes from.) I think, in the past, it was looked down on a bit - like it wasn’t a real qualification somehow - but not so much any more.

I don’t see anything wrong with it. If it gives people who can’t afford to go to university, or can’t physically be at a certain place for hours every day because of illness/disability/family commitments etc the chance to further their education/earn more money/have a better life then it can only be a good thing.

Well yes and no, I mean there's picking up skills, which is great, but if you're doing it as a means of career advancement at some point those skills have to have an offline demonstration / application and it's kind of hard to tell where you're at without feedback from an instructor (if this is the kind of course I'm thinking about - like MIT has open courseware which is just the materials) also, how do you put that on, say, a resume? In my experience most people who look at resumes poo-poo something less than an established degree/certificate but maybe that could change?

Anyway, the answer for all this is free post-secondary education to any American who wants it but I know, how you gonna pay for that