But it doesn't work well for the delivery of education to the masses.
Maybe not, though I would like to see some statistics on that. My prior on this is that education has probably followed the pattern of pretty much every other good thing in 1st world society: it is decade by decade both better and more widely available than it ever has been before.
To clarify, I am not making claims here about how well the higher education works. I am saying that the structure of the US universities where faculty are hired on the basis of their ability to do original research (well, kinda sorta, it's really the ability to publish) but are expected to teach, often pretty basic stuff to pretty stupid undergrads, that structure is suboptimal.
And the changes are easy to see: tenure is becoming harder and harder to get, while adjuncts (who are generally expected to have a Ph.D. but are not expected to do research) are multiplying on all campuses.
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: