Higher education is complicated to analyze partially because it fills so many roles simultaneously, the big three probably being network-building, credentialing

Higher education is complicated to analyze partially because it fills so many roles simultaneously, the big three probably being network-building, credentialing, and teaching. Others in this thread have pointed out that there are increasingly many low-cost options to replace the teaching component, but to my knowledge, nothing has really stepped up to provide near-free networking or credentialing. I suspect that if there were a demonstrably more reliable way to quickly judge employee quality from a resume than looking at alma mater, employers would eventually switch to using that, but it's not clear to me what that would be.