[nanairo]

The model already exist: school vs. universities.

It is just---and this is just my opinion---that as human knowledge became bigger and bigger, what the people at the edge, pushing the envelope do, is further and further from what a 1st year undergraduate does.

Basically we would need another school in the middle for what is a BA/BSci for example, and use univeristy (and university professors) for masters and phds.

As for your example of hard core research professor, the problem is that at one point the number of professors who know a subject become very very small, and hence it's important to put the student directly in contact with those who are expert in the field. Alas it doesn't always work. But for very high levels (masters and phds) that's the only way it can be.

[pigbucket]

Right, but the school v. university model is breaking down for more than one reason. The problem has two edges. Just when you want, because of the expanding boundaries of knowledge, increasingly well-prepared undergraduates, you get the opposite. US universities typically have to teach a depressingly unchallenging hodgepodge of general education courses and remedial courses because students get fucked by the high-school system and because everyone and his brother these days simply must to go to college, no matter how dumb the brother is. A society that depends on universities to teach basic English composition, to take the most egregious example, is like ... well, I can't think of anything that's quite that ridiculous, but it's a massive waste of resources. But it's also a problem that no one wants to solve: It relieves high schools of the burden of actually teaching anything. It's lucrative for the universities, which just throw cheap grad students at the problem. And the four-year continuation of secondary education that the University has become for many is a nice (if hugely expensive, but who gives a fuck) way to keep down unemployment. End of Rant.

[utoku]

As a counter argument, from the wikipedia article on Richard Feynman:

Feynman gained a reputation for taking great care when giving explanations to his students and for making it a moral duty to make the topic accessible. His guiding principle was that if a topic could not be explained in a freshman lecture, it was not yet fully understood.