replying to my own thread here, but this got me thinking, so thanks OP, but...

can anyone here think of some better ways where we could decouple the education process from the work process? To me this seems like the main problem. It seems that we've decided that "get good grades == good employee" collectively. I know I'm a bad employee (which is why I work for myself now but that's another story), but I got great grades in school. I don't know, I just feel like school was rarely about actually learning / growing and was mostly about vocational work most of my time in undergrad, and I wish we could de-couple that some? But maybe I'm naive here...

Make education free. I'd love to study something like philosophy or art history but there's just no return on that investment. Unless you're already wealthy, it doesn't make sense to drop five or six figures on a degree unless it's likely to pay for itself.

Which is even becoming less likely with STEM, as we hit a confluence of higher education costs, fewer job openings, and AI as a competitor for work.