A casual observance: while reading through (I think the thesis and/or chap 1) I sensed a brewing animosity toward the academic world. Why do say the universities have monopoly on credentials? But this more than anything helps me to understand more so why you are opposed to what the legislation proposes. I'm not convinced that the universities could be said to be dependent. The statement is so broad and sweeping. Nothing wrong with a healthy amount of skepticism, but all< universities?
What control does the university have over the student after graduation? I've witnessed a case like the ranch situation of chapter one where the different parties all brought their scientists to the table, each one offering a differing view as to what harm may be done. I'll take another look at chapter one.
Because that is how the lawyers play it in the courtroom and in legislative hearings. That is how insurance companies require state licenses for coverage and government permits demand those credentials as well. It has incredibly pervasive and insidious effects. Consider child development. A Ph.D. in child rearing derives his or her credential by creating "new knowledge" of child development. Note that it must have two qualities to be new: it must be untested, and it must be different than what has worked in the past. That doesn't give us much of a chance of success, does it? These are the people who define how our schools are to teach children. The same is true for environmental mangement theories.
Note the insidious role state licensing plays in this loop and the educational requirements for such licenses. For example: Could a self-educated person get a law license by merely passing the state BAR (British Accreditation Registry) exam? Not any more. Who said that the State should define what constitutes a qualified professional? Who said that the universities were to have that monopoly? Private societies used to compete with each other to do that job until the lawyers scared them out of it. Consequently, the entire system is rotten out of fear of attorneys. As a result, we are now so far from a free market we no longer know how one would work.
Besides the source of their funding, if you were to ask me what is wrong with the university system as such, I would offer that it is almost entirely analytic, driving people into ever narrower fields of expertise. Given the multidisciplinary nature of nature, it is the wrong kind of expertise. There is no faculty credential for a multidisciplinary and synthetic thinker. In fact, the only such credential we have in our society is the patent. That is where my system derives much of its leverage.
Note how increasingly feudal is the nature of our society as is controlled by the professorate as agents for the few that regulate who gets those credentials with grant funding. It's amazingly effective. Try to get a peer review without being a "peer." I did. Couldn't get one. I would have had to pay them and that creates a conflict of interest. I got comments, but not real reviews. Faculty peerage is precisely that. There are a couple of editors of academic publications who have standing offers to publish reviews of my book and still there is no response and no money. IMO it is part elitism, part fear, part financial, and part comfortable ideology. What I am doing is slowly working at that through the more prestigious professors emeriti as they are more independent than many of their colleagues. So far, so good, but it is a slow and careful process.
The roots of the system lie in our adoption of English law and the rather aggressive interpretation of the Constitution by Mssrs. Jay and Marshall at the very founding of the Republic. I have more to say on that, but much of it is speculative and would require more research.