Americans don’t need more degrees, they need training
&quot;<i>There was a time when most people could make a career out of a skill, or stay within the same type of job, but workers today constantly need to adapt. They must become lifelong learners: Teach a student one skill and you got him one job; teach a student to learn and you got him lifetime employment.</i>&quot;<p>It&#x27;s far from clear to me that any beyond a small percentage of people generally, but perhaps Americans in particular, have the capacity to become lifelong learners. Not saying folks are stupid -- the problem isn&#x27;t a lack of raw cognitive capacity, IMHO.<p>What actually makes someone a lifelong learner? Curiosity.  If you don&#x27;t _want_ to learn, it&#x27;s going to be very difficult to do so, except perhaps while under the gun for short periods of time. And, unfortunately, our education system seems ideally tailored for stamping out children&#x27;s natural curiosity. If that sounds overly pessimistic, I&#x27;d welcome a demonstration to the contrary.<p>I feel that the answer is basically &quot;let&#x27;s fix our education system,&quot; which I -- again, perhaps overly pessimistically -- believe to be politically impossible.