> While I have my issues with the system, many Soviet-controlled countries implemented a two-tier higher education system that solved this by having one tier be focused on practical subjects and the other on theoretical ones.

In Germany, there exist even more tiers for tertiary education:

- vocational training

- universities (academic training)

- Fachhochschule (instutions of tertiary education that offer study programs that is more focused on skills that are needed by industry)

- in some parts of Germany: Berufsakademie: even more applied than Fachhochschule; you absolve half of your tertiary education at a company

Britain used to have this too. Sadly it was strangled to death by the UK class system, but the replacement didnt help.

Once upon a time the white collar track was to go to University. One of the old ones if your class situation was pushing you towards executive roles in the Civil Service or banking or some big corporation. One of the newer, redbrick ones if your horizon was more like running a textile mill in the North. You were trained to think and had a fairly Great Books style of curriculum.

For the people who needed advanced education to keep the electric grokulator working, there were polytechnics. People came out of here with practical skills. In some areas, like mathematics, there would have been overlap between University and Polytechnic courses.

Then there were technical colleges where working class people could get skills to help them in their jobs, like rebuilding engines or CNC machining.

Then, people got antsy that university was so elite and only 5% of highschoolers were going. why not let polys be universities? After all, we need to keep up in a global economy. And so there was a massive gold rush and places that had no business or capability became A University overnight.

But...Brits being how they are, they still stratified themselves into class layers. You're far more likely to find a Russell Group university graduate in a fancy job than someone from a former poly in the North. The class system persisted despite everything, and attempts to broaden educational access ultimately did not simultaneously keep the quality uniformly high.