This sounds like a surprisingly good idea, something I hope we see more of (but of course I'll remain pessimistic). What's crazy to me is that it wasn't always

This sounds like a surprisingly good idea, something I hope we see more of (but of course I'll remain pessimistic). What's crazy to me is that it wasn't always the case that you had to go through the formal process of school to achieve credentialing. If you were truly exceptional, and could prove that, you could then get the required credential. For example it used to be the case that you didn't need to go to law school to take the bar exam. You still don't in a few US states. Law school might make it a million times easier to learn the law and pass, but if you already know it why not go straight to the test? Another, admittedly extreme, case was Ludwig Wittgenstein getting his PhD from Trinity College. He had already written the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on his own, then basically showed up and presented it as his dissertation, defended it, mocked his friend Bertrand Russel during defense and got the PhD. What's crazy to me is that if Wittgenstein was alive today he would not be able to achieve this anywhere. There are plenty of people out there who have done ground breaking work in their field, but because of the orthodoxy today, have zero chance of getting a PhD without going through the entire process. There's such a huge difference between schools saying "you technically don't need us to get the credential, but it's going to be much, much harder to go it your own way" than "it doesn't matter what you do, if you don't sit here and play by our rules you will never be recognized". This is where it's hard not to get pretty cynical about the state of higher education today.