What I have seen is that there are many different good explainations of material. However some of these will result in faster uptake by me. The only way the economic transaction of education makes sense to me is to acknowledge the potential of passive learning (books, internet), but to recognize the desire to speed the process. While I can pick up a book on abstract algebra and work through the problems myself to gain understanding, I know that I can pay someone who already is an expert in abstract algebra to package up the mental abstractions for me. Its like using compression for webpages. You could transmit everything uncompressed and the web would work just fine. However we want to save time and money so we compress, delivering content faster and using less bandwidth. The only justification I can see for teachers to exist in a free market is that they speed the process of knowledge aquisition.<p>Now I support fee schedules based on how much work the teacher has to do the shove the knowledge into the head. If it will cost $X for a fast student, I don&#x27;t have any problem with the market pricing that same knowledge to a slow student at $X,XXX. Teachers should be compensated for their expertise. However setting the market price is up to the participant, and a contract to deliver the good should be binding. If teachers were bound to deliver the information, then I see average prices being higher becuase of the lemon effect, but that is an entirely different problem than what we have now.