Somehow, apparently to the complete amazement of the author, thousands of students transfer their community college credits to four-year programs. Thousands of servicemen each year also gain transfer credits through CLEP testing. You can vastly increase the efficiency of the process through standardization, but you'll also vastly decrease the opportunities for graft along the way.
Nearly all Gen Ed 100-200 level college courses can be standardized and taught via online coursework with a high degree of faculty interaction and quality for an absolute pittance. All useful textbook materials for these courses are available in the open source community and there is no legitimate reason why any college kid would have to pay for more than printing costs for their textbooks.
Many major programs of study could extend those efficiencies at least into 300-level coursework. Legitimate programs from accredited universities like MIT and Stanford already do this, and services like Coursera deliver college-quality coursework for a very low fee.
If the goal of higher education was actually conveying knowledge, all of those barriers to learning that exist in colleges across America would already be removed. But the goal isn't learning, it's protecting an accreditation racket, and the smaller rackets of growing University endowments, textbook shakedowns, self justifying academic programs, and a jobs program for academic administrators.
“Thousands of servicemen each year also gain transfer credits through CLEP testing”
And many receive college credit for courses from their job while in Service and/or classes taken in military tech schools.
My kid took advantage of a program where you can skip your high school senior year and do college courses at the community college, with the courses transferring to most 4-year colleges. I'd like to see the government funding follow the high school kid as well.