Dario said we should consider less costly alternatives, and that's where I'm thinking that Wikiversity comes in. This is a wikimedia project that encourages original research and supplies all the necessary IT resources. The only slight issues are that it would all be unpaid voluntary work, and the peer review would be done on wiki much like the reviewing at [[wp:FAC]] on wikipedia.
I'm aware that Wikiversity has a poor reputation in the movement, but I don't think that should prevent something worthwhile being done there.
No-one has yet put a ballpark cost on a different business model, but I'm not expecting it to be something we could easily get the WMF or a chapter to fund.
Regards
WereSpielChequers