This has been happening for at least the past 10 years and there has been very little change. There is a lot of pressure and monetary incentive in keeping things the way they are. I'll give you an example. Many lower division math classes are offered by the math department because they are service classes with hefty per unit price tags and ridiculous book prices, i.e. other departments use those classes as a screening procedure and the math department gets a whole bunch of money to invite speakers and support incoming graduate students and the book store gets proceeds from old book resale.

So as long as there is at least one department out there that is not feeling the crunch the math department will not do anything differently and there is always at least one technical department that does well no matter how good or bad the economy is. So from the other department's perspective it is a good idea to offload as much of the screening of students to the math department as possible since who really wants to spend time with undergrads when there are multimillion dollar grant proposals to submit to bring in money. From the math department's perspective it is a good idea to offer as many variations of the same course adapted to different departments as possible and from the book store's perspective it is a good idea to keep reselling old books at high prices. You tell me which one is going to innovate and get the others to go along with them. Each will cling to their old ways for as long as possible because honestly there is no real competition. The only way to get a piece of paper with B.S. and your name on it is to go to a big name accredited university.

Long reply because I've been thinking about this problem for a long time now and I don't see any real way to force research oriented universities to innovate. There is no real incentive for innovation.