Thought perhaps this was talking about a new economic form for how we do education in the US. A form where individuals empower themselves through various forms of DIY learning and then get an “offset” back from the government for education costs avoided. But it’s more about apprenticeship programs’ effectiveness. Which is a worthy topic.
Apprenticeship is kind of the poor relation part of our educational establishment, although it’s time-honored and still practiced by many unions in the US as the best way to learn how to “do a job”. It seems like we could incorporate much more universal apprenticeship as part of an individuals’ education, rather than move towards a class of citizens with little or no “higher ed”. Let a thousand apprenticeships bloom and let’s also find a way forward for universal lifelong learning.
We might have previously overlooked the need for all citizens to have an understanding of their cultural inheritance in history, science, and things like statistics and probability. To say nothing about overall tech competence.
Not anymore, with recent elections dividing according to those with a college education and those without, and the implications for a populist autocracy that makes possible. Greatly expanded educational tools that enable lifelong learning for all, are more than a nice feature of our civilization, but a requirement if we are to continue with an informed electorate. To say nothing of a competitive workforce and economy in the global markets.