"Education systems have huge budgets, but they are always run by such second rate people that the money is never used as a lever to get what they need. "

I'd just add that frequently it's not so much "second rate people" as "good people working under some crazy-ass constraints with way too many stakeholders to satisfy".

I very much don't buy the notion that someone making 5X the money at bigcorp is automatically a higher grade of person -- they're probably at least as much of a screwup, if you've ever been on the inside of bigcorp to see it.