Education is the most conservative of conservative institutions. It will only change when it must, for example when people vote with their feet and educate themselves on subjects not provided by, and using methods not recognized by, present schools. Then you'll see change.
Of course you're not going to see change if people don't want to spend money on it - and usually when they do it's pretty demanding (see the standardized test stuff).
An area with a growing population would have problems too, having to find money to construct space that may or may not be needed in 10 years.
I'm more complaining about why nothing has been done outside of institutions.
Why haven't private companies created technology and services to serve students? For example: Why does half my class take notes with a pen and paper, and the other half use Microsoft word? Shouldn't a private company find a better way?
You can mix and match your pens and paper without any fear of interface problems - a pen bought a century ago in Germany will work with paper made next year in Argentina. You can even pick up a piece of paper that a different pen was using, and carry on adding to the content with whatever pen or pencil you've got in your pocket. It's a complete, self-contained information display system. I could hand a piece of paper I wrote on to someone from the other side of the world and they'd be able to use it.
Anything looking to replace pen and paper is going to have to be seriously amazing. I'm genuinely astounded that people choose to make notes with Microsoft word instead. The only advantage I can see to that is that you can change what you wrote later (if that is an advantage).
But I still have problems with pen and paper.
I like the ability to add to notes and change them. Professors sometimes meander about in lectures, and I sometimes want to reorganize the ideas they present.
You cannot search efficiently with paper. I have terrible hand writing on paper. Papers wrinkle and drive me crazy. I write slower than I type - and it's assumed (by professors) that people are typing so they teach at that speed (ppt doesn't help). Paper cannot be as easily shared as documents.
Treat the notes you took in class as a rough draft. After class, revise your notes into a final draft. This way you can reorganize the ideas, simplify example problems, and fix any spacing issues or spelling mistakes. This helps you learn the material since you are working with it while it is still fresh in your mind, and makes studying much easier in the future.
But they do. When I went to apply for work on the NASA Space Shuttle in the early 1970s, I entered a room filled with college degree holders, and I didn't have one. But I had something better -- the prior night I had drawn up a circuit diagram showing how I intended to solve their technical problem. When the interviewer saw the diagram, he cleared his throat, rose from his chair, went into the other room and told the college degree holders that the position had been filled.
Things are even better now -- because of the speed of technical change, companies are more willing to consider life experience and other factors apart from formal education. I have a young friend who dropped out of high school and was almost instantly hired by Google, for an excellent reason -- he knows a lot about the kinds of things Google cares about.
My point is that the chasm between the real world and the classroom has never been greater, and students need to listen to many different voices, not just those of teachers.