Very nice topic!
Some day in 1999 ( Now I feel old 🙃) our teacher was preparing us for an important choice that we had to make. Namely, which study route we were going to choose? Back then we only had 2 choices A or B. A being the more economic side and B the more technical. If you had 12 points or more for maths and physics and at least a 5.5 or above for both you could choose for the B side. Because it was more difficult to qualify for B is had a sort of prestige with it. And there was a lot of group (and even parental) pressure to go for B. So they implemented counseling sessions at school to convince kids to still go for the A-side.
I had 13 points, but with barely a 5.5 for math, so I was one of the "cases" that needed counseling. The weird thing about this counseling was that you had to be summoned out of the class to the library for your counseling session. There was nothing that the counselor (as a 14-year-old adolescent) could say to me that would convince me otherwise. Especially since my whole class with all my friends (and enemies) knew what I was summoned for.
And behold from the 7 kids that had their counseling session only 1 was convinced to do otherwise. My teacher thought that she could be the hero that would still accomplish something and asked one of the children in my class that had above 12, but still went for A why he did that?
His answer was straightforward: I am 15 now I will only do 2 more years of school and start as a bus driver afterward. So I need the economics.
Almost nobody heard that last sentence, because almost the whole class burst out in laughter. But I was silent, not that I wanted to be a bus driver but his answer made a lot of sense. A lot more than I heard 30 minutes earlier.
I still went for the B side and struggled a great deal with advanced math the following 3 years. And almost lost a year 2 times about it. Somehow in the last year, everything regarding math finally clicked and I had my highest grades (still only a 7) since the first one.
Now was I one of the lucky ones, but 22 years later that same system where a 13 till 15-year-old has to make life-changing decisions is still being applied. It is a little bit better as you can take an extra year to study economics and switch, but who really wants to do that?
This is one example of many things that are broken now within the educational system. I could have lost 2 whole years in class because of one decision that I had to make while (just) 14.
In college it stays the same, there are a lot of subjects (like the one I did with Marking and Sales) that are not needed. You can read 6 books follow 2 podcasts and maybe follow a short Udemy course while working in the field and already are miles in front of someone (like me) that went to college for 3+ years. Don`t get me wrong specialized subjects will always require more education, but over 60% of the subjects in college now are overkill.
I really hope that the current Covid epidemic will change this in the future, a lot of kids are studying at home and could finally (along with the schools that are closed) see the light that it is really not necessary to study that long, If you don`t want to be an engineer, doctor, lawyer or more.
Don`t believe me?
Rember that boy that went for the A-side quit school at 17 and was laughed at?
He owns one of the biggest fleets of buses, sponsored the elections, and owns a lot of real estate in Suriname now. Talk about choices in life...