[BitwiseFool]

MIPS was a genuine attempt at creating a new commercially viable architecture. Some of the design goals of MIPS made it conducive towards teaching, namely its relative simplicity and lack of legacy cruft. It was never intended to be an academic only ISA. Although I'm certain the owners hoped that learning MIPS in college would lead to wider industry adoption. That did not happen.

Interestingly, I recently completed a masters-level computer architecture course and we used MIPS. However, starting next semester the class will use RISC-V instead.