WH, why pay for degrees? Why pay for years? Sounds union-like to me. Doesn’t work that way in the private sector, unless you’re in a unionized job.
I’ve seen folks earn over $100K per year as practical engineers. They had no B.S., but were very skilled with tools and software, and were creative and had lots of accomplishments (e.g., new products) under their belt. To me, that’s worth paying for.
How to arrive at such in teaching? In business school, we evaluated teachers at the end of the quarter, and the scores were made public, for students to use as they selected their classes for the following quarter. I assume that the Dean used the scores to weed out ineffective teachers, because the lion’s share of my teachers were highly effective.