What if it takes 20 years to grow a crop of skilled workers? Go ahead and walk down to the unemployment center, pick 20 people at random, and let me know how their Python coding is coming along six months from now.
I was able to jump into programming because I was lucky enough to get a solid math & science education that nurtured whatever innate talent I had. The kind of analytical thinking it takes to do higher-level information work can't be taught from scratch in a few months.
Both my parents teach at the University level and they tell me that the students they see coming into their classes now can't even write a simple, logically coherent essay.
Oh, I agree that this is a problem, but you have to admit that attempting to patch workers is a far better medium term solution than trying to besiege the education system for 20 years.
Sure, it doesn't have to be an either/or thing, but it's important to realize that our current problems are many years in the making and might take many years to really fix.
For a simpler long term fix, we could just change how we do college admissions. For example, if we raised the entry requirements for 18 year-olds and kept the requirements re people in their mid-20s and up.
That would eliminate lots of liberal arts majors very quickly, replacing them with more technical people who are better motivated for difficult subjects. It's not an elegant solution, but it's probably easier than untangling the knot of education or somehow getting the political will to slice it in twain.
I was able to jump into programming because I was lucky enough to get a solid math & science education that nurtured whatever innate talent I had. The kind of analytical thinking it takes to do higher-level information work can't be taught from scratch in a few months.
Both my parents teach at the University level and they tell me that the students they see coming into their classes now can't even write a simple, logically coherent essay.