We’ve drawn a systematic line that most people only cross once in their life time.
You’re either being educated, or you’re working. Oftentimes you do the former for 16 years, then do the latter for 40+ years. Oftentimes the first 16 years are boring. You’re excited get out there and start doing! And, the last 40+ years are quite uninteresting because you fall into the monotony of doing the same thing repeatedly.
There’s a fundamental problem that when you’re in school you don’t appreciate what the working world is like and when you’re working, you don’t have time for education.
Why not do 8 years of education, then 2 working, then 4 more years of education, then work some more? Or, why not have some sort of half and half model where you spend half a week working and the other half learning. Why not make education more modular? Adding on components as needed and when interested?
The key idea here is that no system will be singularly perfect. But if we can increase the number of choices, we can create flows that optimally serve more people.