Seth, I think you are going in the right direction but are still bringing along too much baggage from your own experiences in the Education Factory. Lectures were created out of necessity because of a lack of books. We now are in a wash of excess information. Discussion in a great tool for learning and maybe more effective than authoritative information but it is still not the most immediate means to learning. And creating just a different kind of institution doesn’t make it better than the last one. Institutions are for the institutional.
You say that online learning has created an easy way to opt out when the going gets tough. Yes it does especially when it tries to mimic the old ways. So why are you still living in the past?

I say all this to gain your attention and because I think you are asking the right questions just still too programmed to break out of your box.

One good example of another way to thinking is what Gary Wise has come up with: https://livinginlearning.com/category/performance-support-2/

He has is a long-time trainer and has come to the conclusion that training is useless. Yes you read that right. USELESS. (My words) We live in a need-to-know, instant access society. Relying on ‘courses’ and ‘modules’ to gain necessary information is so last century. He has created a term called Embedded Performance Support which is essentially, as I understand it, a way to provide what you need to know and only what you need to know, when you need to know it. Think of it as an expanded Help file only delivered anywhere. Yea, I don’t like those Help files much either but is it the means or only the content that is lacking?

Personally I think Gary is on the right track only a bit behind where I am working. Form must follow function and if Gary is right what would instruction look like if it was built along these lines? You would have to make it interesting, memorable and immediate. It would have to be accessed anywhere, anytime and on anything. Creating instruction like that is quite different than in an industrial setting. Are we up to the task? Not yet I’m afraid. But we will have to get there or we will be stuck in the past while the present holds us hostage by our ignorance.