It's stuck this way because accreditation creates a cartel. To issue an accreditation degree, time-wasting requirements must be satisfied. Accreditation requir

It's stuck this way because accreditation creates a cartel. To issue an accreditation degree, time-wasting requirements must be satisfied. Accreditation requirements are effectively controlled by the customers, which are the universities that are already accredited. Those universities don't want competition to be able to offer students a better deal, with a cheaper degree or with a more-focused degree full of classes that are expensive to operate. For example, consider a 4-year BS in Computer Science. It contains about 1 year of Computer Science, 1 year of vaguely-related things (physics, calculus, etc.) and 2 years of cheap filler nonsense that makes you less-educated than when you started. Accreditation blocks any attempt to offer a full 4 years of actual value.