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.]

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