That sounds really, really nice, genuinely. In the US though, I fear we would fail just as badly on this front with fully government-funded universities. We hav

That sounds really, really nice, genuinely. In the US though, I fear we would fail just as badly on this front with fully government-funded universities. We have pervasive cultural problems and I worry the government would institutionalize them rather than acting as a bulwark against them. In many localities, government-funded K-12 has the exact same problems exemplified by this orgo prof's firing, except the taxpayer is compelled to fund the dysfunction. The silver lining is the charter school movement, which at least sometimes allows families trapped in bad school systems to escape to a better culture, but even in the charter system there is a good amount of exploitation masquerading as education. I think the "enlightened" libertarian view might be needed here - if your university becomes a diploma mill, it ceases to be useful to employers. Eventually, students realize it no longer provides the signaling value it once did and go elsewhere. And gossiping about the failure of standards hopefully accelerates this process.