If I went back into education for 2 more years, piled more student debt on top of myself, not to mention living like a student again, PLUS having to have a part-time job while studying (while the loan is bigger for a PGCE, the costs of living are much much higher), and then got a job as a teacher, worked my ass off for 10 years, I would, if I was lucky, be earning the same salary I am today, a couple of years after leaving university.
This cannot be upvoted hard enough. Education would reform itself overnight if teachers were hired from the top third of high school classes, not the bottom two thirds, and paid salaries that started ~$70k and reached ~$100k in five years if they were good.
Students struggle because you have to be a saint or an idiot to teach under the conditions currently imposed. We don't have nearly enough of the former, and way too many of the latter.
I have a really hard time imagining that brain-dead curriculum boards and mediocre administrators would sustain their death grip on a profession suddenly flooded with really sharp, well paid, professionals.
Imagine the change in classroom atmosphere if teachers had the same social credibility as professors did (or more aptly, if high school teachers had the same respect and admiration from students as kindergarten teachers)
Sounds like a great fucking deal to me.