I mean this is a nice sentiment but it's both not only unrealistic for the vast majority of people, it's something that only a privilege few can actually achieve.
People go to school because they want a better life, the only path to a truly better life in the USA is money. It's really hard to blame students when they've been brought up in a society that has been extremely rotten for their entire lives.
Trade schools. Done. Higher education should remain higher education. Wanting to turn higher education into trade schools is silly when we already have trade schools.
Maybe. Maybe education should be about focusing you in a field, at least the higher you go. But you can focusing on the field learning about how to operate there, of just getting the skills needed to work.
When I was at university (and the years after) some people where saying that university should give you the skills to hold a job, mostly talking about programming in that case (computer engineering degree).
But as AI has shown us those skills (programming) are the first to stop being useful. Learning engineering, architecture, how to think programmatically, ... all these skills are the ones that will survive the culling.