Not only that, but an individual company (as a single rational actor) has every incentive to hire workers with less "perceived" credentials and more actual work

Not only that, but an individual company (as a single rational actor) has every incentive to hire workers with less "perceived" credentials and more actual work credentials. Part of the reason I believe the education bubble is a bubble and will pop, is that the entire point of an accredited degree is to have a recognizable proxy for someone's intellectual capability. The ease at checking a person's ability prior to the internet and social media was in checking with their alma mater if they had the degree that they had and therefore if they were as capable as they claimed. Now it's even easier to check if someone has the intellectual capability by looking at their blog/github repo/facebook/twitter. With that in mind, I think its only a matter of time before that starts to translate into educational institutions competing with industry for students.