In my life I have run across many with talent to spare who cannot use it for lack of the advanced degree or the academic connections. Create a way, similar perhaps to the apprenticeship or an un-student UROP, for alumni/ae and retirees to work for a year in an MIT lab or remotely in a lab of another university with whom someone at MIT is collaborating, and be paid enough, i.e. more than a typical starving grad student. Or they could work part-time. Have them do relevant MOOC meanwhile or perhaps as a requirement to be funded. There is so much raw ability being wasted.