If Harvard eliminated tenure other universities would surely follow, but even they can't take the first step. As soon as they did, Yale would get a great many more faculty applications. When requirements were eliminated at various schools in the seventies this was seen as the decline of standards and soon other schools were bragging about their "core curriculum" that centered on the humanities. When grades have been eliminated they have often been replaced by essays on student performance that were both onerous for the faculty to write and annoying for employers and graduate schools to read. When professors have been required to teach more than they do (in a good university they typically teach one course a semester) then the best of them went off to another school where they could get a better deal. Research universities hire great researchers not great teachers and they will not be motivated to stop this practice unless their very roots are attacked.

There really is no way to fix all this because universities are not motivated to change. But they will be motivated when they are seriously challenged in the free market. Right now, and maybe for a long time, Harvard is safe. But what if the best physics course in the world was put together virtually using the best faculty in world? Would it be better than Harvard's physics course? Would Harvard use it? They might well use it if students preferred it. They wouldn't be seriously upset by having to use it since the average Harvard physics professor can be assumed to not want to teach introduction to physics in the first place. Harvard would then say that was fine because now students would have even more real contact with faculty and labs because they had already taken the virtual course. This is fine with me, too.

But, one should be aware that after awhile there will be many great courses out there and the system may evolve such that courses themselves are no longer the currency of a university education. Further it might happen that the line between high school and college might be blurred by these courses as they become available to high school students. Little by little change will happen.