Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

Basically you do it until you or your friend injuries his back while trying to catch a falling sofa from stairs. After that you just pay for moving services. Seen it many times.

There is a huge real downside, and it is a massive one, is compulsory military service begets reasons to use the military.

Most of the free western world has recognized the invalidity of a large standing army or extravagant military spending. Money going into war is money totally wasted, literally burned up in bullets and bombs and lives.

In the US at least Eisenhower was already talking about where we are today becoming a problem back during his presidency 60 years ago - that the private enterprise built on military contracts would lobby congress to see the military used and expanded to give them more money. The US has refined to an artform the practice of making conflicts to send its young to die in to line the pockets of investors. One of them was both the former CEO of a major defense contractor and the damn vice president under the guy who started permanent endless war against a concept in a desert on the other side of the planet for going on twenty years.

The west and world at large should be happy to not need to train and send their young to suffer and die in war. Nuclear deterrents have functionally eliminated threats to homelands protected by them. Russia and China might be antagonists on the world stage against the capitalist establishment but they are also nuclear powers and thus no war can ever be waged against or involving them directly. It all has to be theater, destroying arbitrary swathes of third world nations in proxy wars meant to justify profits on both sides for private men who sell bombs and need to insure there is somewhere for the government to drop them.

The US and almost all western democracies should be moving towards demilitarizing entirely. There are still useful functions of militaries in defense of borders in most nations - fighting pirates, smugglers, etc - but nation-state level actors will not move against anyone pointing weapons that could glass their whole country in an hour, so wasting the valuable time of millions of young adults preparing for a war that cannot ever happen is all around a disastrous waste of time and money.

There is also the fundamental freedom angle of it. If you want to have kids spend the last two years of public education enroll in something akin to a communal public works labor program instead of teaching them Shakespeare and ancient Sumerian history they will never use that would be more defensible, but it is grossly inappropriate of anyone to say that full adults should be forcibly conscripted en masse against their will for no reason that could remotely justify the breach of their liberty.

The problem is the mandatory part. Even the standard education is in large part optional for both students and parents. Its a gross violation and overstepping of fundamental liberties to have grown up free to turn around and point at our descendants to then say they must be forced to serve.

The Vietnam Draft will go down in history as a gross human rights violation of a generation of young adult men. That war was a proxy battle of world powers to send their young to die to line the pockets of their militaries and their contractors all in the name of ideological and economic conquest paid in blood.

In contrast, the WW2 draft is vindicated in how influential US support was in turning the tide on both fronts. US involvement invariably saved millions of lives and helped stop tyrannical genocide across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Violating the liberty of your citizens for that kind of end is probably righteous, but don't let the widows and parents bearing the flags of their fallen sons hear I said that - they died in large part to save the citizens of other nations, not for their own.

I strongly support a public works program that anyone can enroll in for a contracted number of years. Anyone lost entering adulthood should have something to fall back on that can help them contribute to society - and we sure as hell need it in the US, the infrastructure is crumbling disastrously and the country is massive and can use a substantial amount of hard labor maintenance. It is just that none of the financial incentives are there, or regulations are perverse enough to skew away private capital from fixing many of these issues. Regardless of why, we can see a ton of work we would like done, but don't have the money to afford ourselves, individually, or even as small businesses, but can accomplish collectively and publicly with something like a revitalized civilian corp of engineers.

> I understand that it's important to "gain broad interests"

Its important, but I definitely agree with the OP its not ~40k a year and 3 prime years of your life important.

Its also something high school should be presenting. Its the literal last step that the state has in producing productive members of society from its curriculum, and they waste it on Shakespeare driving generations to "hate" reading than trying to diversify their students interests to get them excited about career prospects and opportunities they can rise into.

Its evident in how totally directionless and lost most college freshman are. They did what they were told in gradeschool, don't remember a fraction of it, and are now being drilled with the same kinds of banal "diversification" classes of lecture and monotony they have toned out for a majority of their life at that point.

Experiencing diversity is something that requires a desire to experience it in the first place. Forcing people to do it when all they want is a job that pays them a living wage is at least disrespectful to their self determination.

> The problem is we do not have enough licensed escalator mechanics to do the work. Money isn't the problem.

So is the problem that there aren't enough mechanics, or not enough licenses?