HN user
I'm glad you pointed out the importance of checking the reverse path. Traceroute can often be misinterpreted. I'd recommend the NANOG presentation "A Practical Guide to (Correctly) Troubleshooting with Traceroute".
https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog45/presentations/Sunday/...
I had a similar issue with T-Mobile and bogon filtering of 5.0.0.0/8:
http://www.wordsforreading.com/blog/2012/07/19/let-bogons-be...
I would generally agree that historically universities have not been as focused on teaching as research, but I believe there might be a shift in this. Many top-tier engineering schools, such as Purdue, have engineering education departments (https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/AboutUs/) looking into the pedagogy of technical education.
I dont't want to generalize, but if there is one thing I have learned from my limited experience working in both a Title I HS district and a fairly affluent K-12 district is that these problems are very, very complex.
aik, Here's one example of a downside: Even relatively well-performing school districts can struggle when their student population starts moving to a new charter school in the area. Since many of the costs for education are fixed within a certain margin, it becomes difficult to shed costs to compensate for the lost funding for each student that left the district.