Smicha for the Wrong Purpose

Overcoming Bias has a couple of posts on how contemporary academia isn't designed to produce or disseminate world-ready knowledge, but instead focuses on manufacturing prestige and "authorities". If the system was actually about knowledge (as we idealistically imagine it) then:

a. Undergraduates would be taught by expert teachers, not big-name professors who don't really care and require the assistance of a team of TAs.
b. There wouldn't be undergraduate research journals (even our much beloved Gesher), nor would there be the glut of academic journals filled with silly jargon. Academics would focus on the most pressing questions, and seek to find the most compelling answers. Everything else will got tossed in the can.
c. University curricula would be much more comprehensive, focused, rigid - and practical. Once you determine what it is that you wish to study, it should be relatively obvious what does and doesn't need be covered. That core of knowledge and analysis should neatly match what it is you want to do with that education.

Since, however, its about prestige: we want to be students of fancy professors whose research has nothing to do with our mid-level course; people publish for the sake of publishing, and, in the process of finding something they can write about, they lower the quality bar, specialize in something no one else cares about, and avoid the big questions; the curricula has more to do with graduating with a title than anything else. Universities make their set of requirements and, well, you just sort of do 'em. Generally, the knowledge you cover is useful - but only coincidentally.

Unfortunately, I believe the same flawed set of goals applies to our smicha system (though it expresses itself in different ways): the goal is not to produce knowledge (or effective rabbis), but prestige.

a. Rabbis running a smicha program are not always the best teachers - in fact, I'd say that after high school, pedagogically sound rabbis were the exception. The goal isn't to learn from Great Rabbi X, but to have learned under Great Rabbi X.
b. You have shiur in Bava Batra b'iyun, and learn the Halakhot of Taaroves - even though these have nothing to do with life as a rabbi. Sure, some Rosh Yeshiva-track semicha students need to know it, but that's coincidental. Heck, it'd be nice to a have a tanakh-track, and a shul-rabbi track, and high school teacher track, . . . but that's not how its done. Instead, its about having "done" prestigious Bava Batra, and having learned what every other smicha program makes their students learn. Smicha program X's curricula parallel the curricula of other smicha programs - because the point isn't to have the best curriculum, but to send the same signals everyone else is sending.
c. Roshei Yeshiva are not encouraged to produce publishable hiddushim, or to focus on big or unsolved questions, but to just to give shiur and just generally be respected and smart. Nonetheless, lots of people publish (e.g. our much beloved Beis Yitzhak, the glut of "Shiurei haRav X" that are published at the behest of Rav X's students!) but without any really significant product.

Nope - its just about prestige. In a way it works - people leave RIETS with a title "rabbi" that signals something about them to other people (much as a BA from Hopkins does), and that is important and - apparently - useful. But, considering how we have this great, well-funded, well-staffed set of institutions, wouldn't it be nice if we used them for a better purpose?