[maxglute]

This broadly true but economy isn't run on NBA, NHL, MLA, i.e. a few 1000 of 5 standard deviation talent where separation is mostly genetics. Academia need to develop magnitude more passable high end workers, the genetic pool for that is large and system biases towards culture to fill 1,000,000s of 1-2 standard deviation brains. You need to hammer minor leaguers to see if they make it to rookie league or whatever level below AAA that system has demand for. Reasonable system would be to herd everyone through filtering process and throw drop outs into vocational training or soft subjects that should not be elevated on same level of STEM, not because they're less valuable people blah blah, but the pipeline should distinguish and prioritize strategic sectors.