Universities have sold a whole generation a lie!

Overall, some 40pc of US public school students fail to meet standards in either maths or English, worse than pre-pandemic.  - Joel Kotkin

The country was hardly doing spectacularly before then. 

• In maths, the OECD’s 2018 Program for International Student Assessment found the United States was outperformed by 36 countries, not only by China, but also Russia, Italy, France, Finland, Poland, and Canada...

Even well-paying jobs of this kind have been hard to fill. 

Ford chief executive Jim Farley notes that the carmaker has 5,000 open mechanic jobs that pay $120,000 annually that can’t be filled...