Research is always difficult, in any field. You don’t get a PhD for courses, when you’re expected to have insights that no one ever has had before, that’s just a hard thing. Same with designing research. It’s so difficult and complex across the board people make big mistakes doing it all the time.

Same with the parent problem. Recruiting humans to study is always a huge mine field, medical/psych/sociology/etc. all deal with it.

So what’s different about education? I don’t know your field, but it sounds like things are too tightly (inherently) coupled to public policy controversy, on top on the money thing.