What is education worth?

I saw an interesting video clip from Reuters News that was on a blog of The Atlantic Monthly.  The report states that some teachers in Korea earn over 4 million dollars a year.  One teacher has over 50,000 subscribers to his video lessons.

There are some interesting facts about the Korean educational system - students often are in class 10-12 hours a day, the goal of education is to get into a good university, and the respect that Korean teachers receive.  

However, the most interesting aspect for me was the prevalence of online access to education.  These teachers make this much money because they sell their knowledge online.  This is so much different than what we focus on here in the United States.  We worry about the relationship between students and teachers and making sure students have a voice and constructivist learning.  The examples that were shared in this video make it appear that the focus on learning is more recall and not critical thinking.  Whether or not that is true I do not know.

It does raise some interesting questions.  Can we create a system in the United States that would allow every student to be taught by the "best" teacher?  What does it mean to be a great teacher?  What is the relationship between the soft skills of teaching - knowing how to reach disinterested students, developing good relationships with students - and the hard skills of teaching - knowledge of the content?