It's worthwhile to consider where the point of diminishing returns is with education. I'd argue that we are well past it. There is not really that much work even in the modern economy that requires more than a 10th grade general education. We know that because in countries like Germany it is quite common for someone to exit the formal schooling system at 16 and still get a white collar job.
Yes; German workers in some industries are arguably more educated than their American counterparts because of the training and continuing education programs in their workplaces.
Sounds like an undue burden on German businesses; how can we expect the private sector to thrive when businesses might be bearing their own training costs instead of shrugging them off to labor and a public education system?
I think rather than not educating, I say there needs to be more education, for advanced topics, such as the sciences. More people ought to be doing research. Research into better tech, material sciences, bio sciences etc. A 10th grade education is not enough.
If there's a lack of people doing scientific research, it's not because there's a lack of people educated enough to do so. Look at the supply of science PhDs vs. openings for science jobs. Every year, more science PhDs graduate and most of them find themselves unable to get jobs actually doing the science they love and trained for.
(Everyone should be able to access whatever education they want, for whatever reason they want it. There are serious inequalities in education access (like everything else) in this country(/world), which need be addressed as a moral issue. So don't misread me as against any of that. But, again, if there is a national deficit in scientific research, it's not because we fail to produce science PhDs, but rather because we fail to fund jobs which take substantive advantage of those PhDs)
