> It selects for the ability and intrinsic motivation to learn.
You are confusing obedience and willingness to jump through hoops with the motivation to learn. People largely don't need school to learn most things. I would argue that most good learners actually hate school. It would be challenging to self-teach your way to advanced math/physics but that does not concern the vast majority of education.
Being motivated to learned is deeply linked to having a reason for learning. I actually wouldn't trust people who were too industrious at school for careerist reasons because it mostly means they are able to tolerate bullshit and rote learn without much pushback on nonsense.
STEM is somewhat immune to this because you need at least some form of understanding to solve actual problems but plenty of field have a legitimacy issue resulting from this effect.
Notably the medical field is full of hard working idiots and most of the social sciences are infested with ideological parrots.
Allegedly it is supposed to select for conscientiousness but since I have faced specialised doctors who schedule 2 interventions when it could be done in one for billing purpose, I would argue it's mostly self-interest or a very perverted form of conscientiousness.
> If you were running a factory or a building construction company, wouldn't you want that in someone you hire?
Someone having a specific diploma doesn't mean he is actually competent in practice. It is just more likely that he isn't absolutely terrible, but that's mostly risk edging.
It's funny you take that example because a while ago there was a news in France where an architect had sentenced because he practiced without the required diploma. The guy was 60 and he had designed some big building, even for the public market (his mistake); he had learnt on the job with a mentor and never got around finishing the school curriculum.
Le Corbusier famously didn't have any formal architectural training yet seventeen of his projects are on UNESCO list. So I dunno, personally I would hire Le Corbusier regardless of his training if I ever could afford it but the point is that everyone should be free to choose for themselves, not the powers that be of the education establishment.
> Are there high school dropouts who have the ability and intrinsic motivation?
Yes, it doesn't mean anything, just that they got bored with education system or had some other problem.
Two of the most valuable companies were founded by drop outs, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (not high-school, but first year of college is basically the same).
If it was just a problem of competence, you could have some sort of certifications for most things, where one could take an exam to prove that he knows what he is doing.
But this doesn't happen because it is about enriching a specific class, restricting access to high level jobs to people who will submit to the dominant ideology. Most certifications/exams have a specific education level/diploma as requirement for entry. This is just supply control in favor of the most fortunate.
You just cannot reduce ability and motivation to the willingness/capacity to submit to the education system.
> But as an employer would you risk assuming a high school dropout had the same motivation?
That's the whole point of a business. Assume risks to merit the potential payoff.
Why do you think the cost of job training should be assumed by the public when they will not get any of the private benefits generated.
On top of that, the issue is clearly a disconnect between what is needed in the market and what type of curriculum has been sold in universities so it's clearly not working.
In any case it seems insane to me that you are arguing for the isolation of training risks for the benefits of business.
What is need is relaxed employment regulations, so that if it doesn't work out, it is not too expensive for business to let go of poor prospect. In an healthy labor market, people would find jobs and the required training much easier.
Schools are just a way to offload the cost to the private individual at best or to the public at worst. That's just bad, business have no reasons to exist if they are just to leach of public benefits, might as well go full on communism at this point.