It's very interesting to read your second paragraph and then follow it up by reading about Hungry Academy: http://hungryacademy.com/

Essentially, Living Social has done just this. They decided that the talent pool was thin, and the usual means of finding new hires weren't cutting it, so they mixed a bit of unconventional hiring with a dash of unconventional education and came up with the Hungry Academy. It will be interesting to see if this is a continuing trend, though I can't say I exactly relish the idea of corporate sponsored higher education as the new norm.