If you separate the testing and certification from the education, it isn&#x27;t quite so important where the knowledge&#x2F;skill came from, so long as the person has it.<p>For instance, if you take the rock guitarist certification test, and pass, you should be able to play guitar passably well in a rock band.  It doesn&#x27;t matter if you studied in a music conservatory for a few years, or worked small-time gigs in bars and clubs, or played a guitar-learning video game.<p>It&#x27;s not the education that&#x27;s the bottleneck.  It&#x27;s proving to others that you have the knowledge&#x2F;skill in an efficient way.<p>The professional associations for actuaries (SoA, CAS) runs their own testing regime.  You can take a university course to prepare for the tests, but you don&#x27;t have to.  That testing and certification process has led to the situation where passing another exam usually triggers a pay increase.  And actuaries consistently rate as having very high job satisfaction.<p>ABMS runs certification tests for specialist physicians.<p>Lawyers have the bar examinations and board certification for specialists.<p>The same could happen for other careers.  A group with a narrow focus could poach the testing and certification function from the generalist universities.  For someone who has no need for external guidance with respect to a general education, and who knows what sort of <i>career</i> they want, they could skip college, and climb the ladder of a testing authority.  That would present some risk that the authority itself fails in some way before all the tests are passed, and the career position established.