What you cannot get on the internet is validation of competence. There is a way to fix that.
Any human then could use any means imaginable to acquire the necessary knowledge to pass We Test tests. Any school would do, no accreditation required. The Internet is loaded with coursework and curricula, libraries and lab-simulators. Any human with the drive and intelligence to learn on their own could then qualify for a job. No saving for decades, no brainwashing, completely transferable work, at any pace one can withstand. Any employer could then simply select from a menu of We Test specifications instead of a diploma, at any level. We Test tests.
One would think that this should have happened a long time ago, but in fact there is one thing standing in the way that makes the realization of this seeming inevitability a matter of now or never.
State licensing requires degreed credentials obtainable only at said profligate, bureaucratic and unaccountable institutions charging outrageous fees and demanding excessive time as only a State monopoly could command. Why not just amend the legislation specifying education for state licensure by adding the simple words, "or equivalent"?
As an example of how little it would take, consider my wife. She just passed her board certification exam as a Clinical Nurse Specialist in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. She walked into H&R Block, sat at a computer, took a three-hour exam harder than anything she'd endured in her Masters' Program at Cal State San Francisco, and within five minutes after completion had her passing grade. If the private system can handle a test that specialized, why can't it test arithmetic, algebra, US history, or college chemistry? Instead of bricks and mortar, it would be e-books in quarters. Why not?
I have thought the same thing as you for a couple years. The educational establishment is a Dem special interest group and will fight this with all the power that they have. But in conservative states, maybe something like this can be done. Of course, there are limitations, since the certification would not be transferable over to Dem states.
I was awarded a United States function patent thirty years ago for a device that could have securely automated the testing of human’s knowledge at remote, unattended locations. See patent number 4,486,180.
Seems my idea was was a bit premature. None of the big computer firms of the time was interested in licensing.
The patent rights expired long ago, of course. But the strikingly handsome, contemporary product design was never published, and is still available.
C’est la guerre...