There are some examples in fitness-educational content, say Jeff Nippard and Athlean-X, that use some clickbait tactics in terms of thumbnail choosing, titles,

There are some examples in fitness-educational content, say Jeff Nippard and Athlean-X, that use some clickbait tactics in terms of thumbnail choosing, titles, and editing, but then nonetheless delivery high-quality educational content that doesn't seem like it should have been behind clickbait. But even if you feel like that's a betrayal of your integrity and you just want to produce something like MIT OCW, well, there are other examples from fitness content, say Stronger by Science, Sigma Nutrition, Iron Culture, where they either make enough to get by but not a ton, or even in Iron Culture's case lose money from the social media ventures but do it anyway. If you want to use MIT itself as an example of something that can be legitimate, high-quality education, but still make money, you can consider that universities operate as non-profits and rely on charitable donations to amass the wealth they have. I don't think the phenomenon you're getting at here is limited to YouTube or even to educational content on any platform. Sellers of junk food make more money than sellers of high-nutritional, better quality food, and the most profitable sellers of high-nutrition content, high-quality food are even still using clickbait-like tactics of misleading marketing and overselling what their products can really do. The most boring fruit and vegetable stands in the world selling basic nutrient-dense, really good products but not lying about what it can do for you, are just getting by and not getting rich. Sometimes, that has to be enough. If you believe in what you're doing, do it, even if you're not going to get rich.