College degrees are a very inefficient signal in this regard. Reid Hoffman has written about this, and he talks about the need for some sort of protocol which can be used to collect data about everything you learn that can be compiled to let others know what you’re competent in. This could be anything from message boards you frequent to MOOC’s you take (but not necessarily finish), and even things that happen offline as long as you log them correctly.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114692/college-diploma-time-upgrade

I think he’s on to something.

That combined with the very low barriers of entry mean low completion rates are going to be inevitable, but not necessarily a sign of anything going wrong.

Like you I don’t think MOOC’s are the answer, but they are useful for providing structured information at very low cost.

I’d use myself as a data point. I’ve probably signed up for about 7 or 8 MOOC’s and completed only half of them. My learning was very fragmented, but they’ve allowed me to self-teach myself html and css, some javascript and python, and a little bit of economics and data scrubbing, all for a total cost of $250, which is less than the tuition of a community college.

Decent results, very low cost.