Personally I think college is a waste of time. I didn't graduate and live very comfortably.
But your idea is already somewhat implemented, there are free teaching courses by Harvard, MIT, etc. where you can take classes online.
I'd like to shift your example slightly, and focus more on teaching business skills that earn money. Really, the only ways to truly make money is:
1. Inheritance
2. Real Estate
3. Start your own company
The rest is just a facade to slave the working class.
if you just want to live comfortably, then its a waste of time indeed.
you dont go to collage to live comfortably. you dont go there to make it easier to get a job either... it could help, but thats not the purpose. you go there to learn things you wana learn. or dont go at all
Would there be a campus? How would you fund maintenance, repairs, and if a campus, dorm housing, food costs, things like that? A publicly funded Kickstarter or something?
Grades are for more than just the student. Grades also help evaluate the teacher when paired with other variables and it helps for funding, be it for the college itself or for student scholarships. Grades are a system of monitoring that, with it's share of flaws, is designed with more than just the student in mind. How would you evaluate the teaching plans?
Homework helps for reinforcing concepts. It may feel like busy work, but it does help drill things into the brain. The problem isn't homework itself if you ask me, the problem is being made to take courses that have nothing to do with your craft in the name of receiving a "general education". Exams and tests meanwhile help for evaluating how much they have learned. Would you just expect every student to be self-motivated, even over concepts they don't like? What if that concept is the foundation of their study?
I know of at least one college that seems to not believe in grades, and it's been mocked for it more than once.
"Going a step further, I think a committee of old men deciding if research is valuble or not could be done away with"
Old people tend to have money. Money helps things flow.
"but the truth is that Earth doesn't need Humans impressing eachother."
...how are they supposed to know if they're hiring someone proficient or not if they don't bother to see how impressive their candidates are? Would hiring become more like lotto?
"And by allowing a global community to decide what is valuble and what isn't, corruption is completely removed."
How are people's wants and needs not corrupt, and how are people's wants and needs not steered by bigger businesses in this model?
This Guy: "write a blog for "god's" sake."
She has one. She posted it around a month ago in this topic.