What happens when the benefactors of a system are in charge of its future?
History is written by the victors. Rich people fight to keep in place the conditions that made them rich in the first place – low taxes and commercial subsidies, without considering the interests of the poor. Makers of education policy, who are thorough academics, fight to retain school and college systems that created their success, regardless of how broken that system is for the majority or for future generations.
For a system to improve, the people whom it does not serve must determine its future.
Otherwise, regardless of the best intentions, there is a conflict of interest. There is a tendency to propagate a system that has served them at the expense of others.