If someone comes up with a better system, it will be adopted. It is very hard to determine who has the capacity to be a Professor. The current system works fine most of the time. It is true that crackpots get through on occasion, but the vast majority of professorial appointments are reasonable.
"If someone comes up with a better system, it will be adopted."
Academia moves very, very slowly. Stuff remains unchanged for centuries, just because that's the way it's always been done.
For instance, the lecture model was adopted when books were hand-written and very expensive -- basically the lecturer (in some institutions, actually called "reader") would read the text very slowly and distinctly, while the students would copy it down verbatim. At the end of the term the students would have their own copy of the text.
We've had printing presses for quite some time now, but the lecture lives on.
Law and religion are similar. Note that those institutions also still retain many medieval trappings, both intellectual and physical (robes, funny hats, etc.)
> If someone comes up with a better system, it will be adopted.
No. New, better systems are automatically adopted only if they help the establishment. Anything that question the privileges of those currently in power will meet heavy resistance (or inertia).
