I would abandon the whole "cram for N years and get a degree, then never again" scheme.

Imo education should be a lifelong thing: available at any time, part time or full time, on-demand; for example, new requirements come up at a job and you need new skills? grab a course. want to enter a new subfield? grab a few relevant courses. got interested in something new all of a sudden? grab a course and see if the interest doesn't wane. laid off? consider taking the chance to study full time for a few months and pick up some new skills or plug holes in prior knowledge.

It should be based more on voluntary interest ("I want to learn this thing!") or actual concrete need ("business is looking for someone with skill X and person Y looks like a good fit but they need to study a bit") and less on the idea that you sit through courses and exams and demos in exchange for points that eventually buy you a piece of paper..

University (or, rather, education in general) should be with us through the entire life.

There are open universities that sort of go in this direction, but the last time I looked at them, it felt like they're still rather structured around getting a degree and all the bs that goes with it.

I would cut half of it. The best things I learned in college (CS) were economics, finance and statistics, it helped me a lot when I got a job as IT analyst in a sales team in a big company, being able to understand the work, purpose and environment and become a valuable contributor , not that geek that was speaking a different language nobody understood.

What I would add to college curriculum today is a good project management course, up to PMP level; also for CS, an equivalent of ITIL foundation.

For CS the biggest gap I see in fresh graduates are testing and performance and a more solid foundation on RDBMS: even in the era of NO-SQL and HADOOP the starting point is still understanding RDBMS.