It's probably cleaner to directly couple those that want it, so that those that want to decouple can be left to the academic path. It's pretty normal to hear from people that when they entered the workforce they learned way more than what they learned at college. Let's incentivize this. Governments should directly subsidize education.

Instead of getting student loans and going to college for 4 years where you don't accomplish much, companies should directly offer high school students 4 year full paid internships. At the end the student needs to go through a test from an expert in that field, possibly a professor lead examination, and to the degree that they pass the company and student share in a large prize. If they pass that test, they officially get the degree.