Sleipnir, I owe you a bit of an apology, firstly for not having responded at once (I don't look in this forum so often as I do others), and also for misinterpreting you.
There's been quite a trend to be rude about University education, so I interpreted your statement
"Of late, the main prerequisite for getting a bachelor's degree seems to be possession of a thick wallet or access to someone else's thick wallet."
too broadly, and criticised you for some things other people have been saying.
You ask about University value for money. Well, there's no doubt Universities don't always achieve the best efficiency, but it's a difficult question to answer. (1) University finances are usually so labyrinthine and enigmatic that it's hard to work out how much in total they receive, and from whom. I suspect funding sources have changed a lot in the last 20 years, which means they can look a lot more expensive now, if you're a money-source that's become more popular.
(2) Some overheads have undoubtedly gone up as the world has become more complicated. In biology you can't get major journal papers any more by being a retired priest who potters about Lincolnshire with a notebook.
(2) What Unis have to teach has changed a lot, too. Obviously computer scientists of today are very different people to those of 20 years ago. The field has expanded so much. One of the criticisms they often get is that the students they produce are not "ready for real world situations", which usually means "not experienced". But you can only give a person education, experience comes with time in the business, so this isn't really a fair demand for industry chiefs to make on universities. All the same, the course must be relevant. Question is, relevant to what? It's not a one-size-fits-all business.
I sort of feel that we should (1) emphasise the diversity of computing knowledge, and accept that technical qualifications in particular systems are sometimes more useful than a deep knowledge of algorithm theory (some people need to know microsoft handbooks, others need to know Knuth), and (2) look at cost-effectiveness of all training, with a view to maximising benefit, without unduly attacking a few suppliers of training. The genuine universities don't alarm me as much as the diploma-shops, both out-and-out crooked, and "respectable-but-if-you-look-closely-meaningless".
