I’d think it important and quite doable to require some local, on-site testing for courses in the hard sciences, especially. I’d think that’d also go a long way toward establishing credibility for the courses and credits.
The community college model is, of course, more cost effective than the standard, overgrown colleges and universities. But there’s no reason why the taxpayers should need to shell out more than Rick Scott’s $10K degree for students who supposedly couldn’t afford it otherwise; and, really, any student ought to be able to swing a couple grand a year toward his/her education.
Yes, a lot of the current, bloated, higher ed apparatus would collapse without government funding; but if that’s the case IMO it really should collapse anyway. Those great campus facilities we’ve been paying for through taxpayer subsidies could well be repurposed or multi-purposed for elderly housing and the like.
I think we need a different way to assess teachers. I’ve talked with one of my sons about this; he is not a scholar and finds school boring (and he is in private school). We need more competent teachers, and I think that classroom visits (vs. standardized testing) is one direction that could be explored. We all know who is a good and who is a bad teacher. Visitors from the outside could offer suggestions for improvement as well as evaluations.
Re bloated administrations...Much of the money goes not only for fancy buildings (to be competitive with other colleges) and also to sports, whereas much could be used for instruction or to reduce (!) tuition.
In Europe, buildings are not old until they are 500 years old, and then they are valued for their historical style. We have to stop building new campuses after only 40 years or so; we need to learn how to build to last and then to refurbish and reuse our architecture, and not only in schools but across the commercial spectrum.