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Yes, Motteizean rationalist technocrats can devise a better system, but there doesn't seem to be a better system anywhere in the world. A high school diploma doesn't serve as the entrypoint to white collar work in any society that I know of(although there might be countries where some alternative to a college degree is widely accepted- can you list any? I think the US and Germany accepting a master license in the trades as equivalent to a bachelor's degree is the closest thing that exists- and that's more of a government convention than a real thing).
This isn't like low-carbon electrical grids where someone has gone and done it. It's the closest thing to an iron law of industrialized societies(that is, those needing a lot of scribes- people who can read, write, follow directions in not-retarded ways, act in all the ways white collar workers are expected to, etc but who don't have specific skills) that education of minors gets inflated in pointless rigor that gets coupled with grade inflation because society thinks it's just that important. Basically all non-fuckups in East Asian countries are shoved into a college admissions rat race, the percentage of German high school students in Gymnasia as opposed to Hauptschulen keeps rising, etc. This isn't just a democracy thing; China isn't one, and countries with vastly different political cultures keep doing it. And the scribal class is mostly women so prevailing ideology insists it needs to be feted and expanded, but that isn't the sole factor- Iran is not a very feminist place but it does the same thing with pushing more education than really needed.
At least in Iran's case, they have the excuses of "semi-isolated nation that has been building a nuclear program for decades" and "ran by an Islamic theocracy, which requires rigorous study of religious text."
That being said, I agree that it's...weird how much societies around the world have commoditized(?) education.
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There is at least one foreign country that has a better system in this respect: the past. And I don't mean pre-industrialization either. Pre-GI bill, certainly.
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