The whole college degree as a filter thing is the laziest thing a company could do to quickly get through a stack of applications. On the other hand the market is apparently in their favor enough that they can afford to use lazy filters like these that might lead to missing out on an awesome employee.
There really needs to be a way to get honorary degrees of some sort where you've put in the work. College degrees are something focused to complete, which shows initiative, but in terms of classes and skills they are so unfocused i'd rather see somebody so focused within a niche with no degree because they knew college would hurt their ambition.
Honorary degrees are usually granted to people who have achieved something particularly noteworthy in the field, or who make large donations to the school. I think what you're actually asking for is academic credit for work experience. And indeed some of the lower-tier online colleges such as University of Phoenix or Kaplan University do offer that option. So if you just want to check the box of having a Bachelor's degree then that might be an option, but be aware that many employers don't take such degrees seriously.
What's with the downvotes? Somebody actually going to refute that college degrees aren't as focused? Because that's pretty hard to argue given all of the requuired non-essential tasks and all the electives which are just whatever classes that you have to pay for, but can be complete throwaways.
