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I actually think they would dry up as it becomes obvious that they simply don’t pay. As it becomes obvious just how much debt you’ll take on — basically people are buying a houseful of debt for a degree — eventually those markets will change when it becomes more clear that some programs have very low post-grad employment rates and still owe a lifetime of debt.
And I’m not sure that employers are still taking “any old degree from any university.” They’ve likely been burned often enough on vanity degree holders with huge egos and little knowledge or work ethic to speak of. These types of things employers are sensitive to simply because bad hires make them less competitive in business. If you’ve got ten bad people on a team of fifty, they’re not only not performing themselves, but often slow down everything around them as other, productive people, need to fix their mistakes or deal with their drama.
I do see a potential market for College Level learning apps, or paid zoom courses, or even just guided readings where people with interest in a subject can pay $50 to study it with a phd guiding things. Especially in literature or history or the like where there’s no field trips or labs, you can probably get much the same level of interaction as you’d get in a classroom but at pretty low fractions of the cost. Books and video and the internet are cheap. Zoom allows for the creation of virtual classrooms. Apps allow for basic self testing and feedback.
If YouTube has taught me anything, this does already exist, you can subscribe to watch digital classes from experts. I think it's CuriosityStream and Skillshare that offer this.
Online courses for people "with interest in the subject' can only satisfy interest in the subject; they're no good as signals to employers.
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