The system is of course hard to change, since there are lots of vested interests that don't want it to change.

Not if you do something that requires no-ones permission. My suggestion is a public database that lists courses, degree programs or other products of formal education, and lists how many of the participants fail vs. how many get the degree/certificate/whatever.

With somebody who wants to radically reform education (like Peter Thiel) throwing a moderate amount of money at it, this should be very doable. And it has two groups of customers: Students will want to look up the stats before they start something, and employers will want to see how much of a selection is actually proven by a given degree/certificate/whatever. While you're at it, maybe also list average time to completion, price, prerequisites to participation and whatever else helps either or both of these customers.

With enough political influence, I believe the best reform would be to mandate that each programme of higher education has to fail at least a defined fraction (say a third) of the applicants. That's what they do for driver license tests in Germany, and it makes the faculty/students non-aggression pact quite impossible. (Of course it only works if trying a second or third time incurs nontrivial extra cost.)