Bingo. Accreditation-on-demand is the second half of the puzzle.
One interesting solution is that offered by Western Governors University (created by 19 governors of western US states). It's non-profit, online, low-cost, and... "nationally, regionally, NCATE, and CCNE accredited."
They have a low, flat-rate tutition per term, regardless of how many courses or credits you take. Most interesting of all (I think), they mainly care about what you know, not how much time you spend with WGU: if you already know something, you can get "assessed" (e.g. tested) and move through the program faster.
I don't think credentials are very meaningful. An alternative is to let students simply display all their work on the internet. Employers can check out their work to determine their eligibility for a job.
How long do you think it would it take an employer to read through 50 Masters level thesis papers on chemical engineering, plus few hundred shorter lab reports and papers, to determine which of the 50 people applying for a job actually knows anything about chemical engineering? Also where will these potential employees get the lab equipment needed to conduct the experiments necessary to produce this work to put up on the internet?
If there's 50 qualified candidates, then about 3 hours. They will just scan them, and pick the student who's work seems the best fit / highest quality / whatever.
If there's 49 useless candidates, and 1 good one, a similar amount of time. It doesn't take long to spot a sub-par paper, especially if the students have an incentive to be very clear about what they have done.
