Really? The current US education system seems to "churn out" fewer people with useful vocational skills ("20th century factory employees") than ever before.
Yep, we've seen years of cut-backs on the vocational side because parents believe their kids must go to college... so we're left with a system designed for the era of straight-out-of-highschool vocational workers, operating in a parental environment that sees college as an absolute necessity, and labor market where most of those degrees equate to expensive GEDs.
Terribly inefficient. The whole system warrants refactoring.
K-12, tradeschools, internships/apprenticeships, college, med/law schools, adult retraining, enlistment, officer training... it's a ball of spaghetti. We need to review each component and the overall system through the lens of modern societal and economic needs.