I'm "smart" relative to the general population, but you could have thrown all the education in the world at me and I'd never have become Alexey Petrov.
I have a hunch that the Alexey Petrovs -- the upper 0.001% or whatever -- of the world do tend to get recognized and/or carve out their own space.
I think the ones who'd benefit from your plan would be... well, folks like me. I mean, I did fine I guess, but surely there are millions as smart as me and smarter than me who fell through the cracks in one way or another.
I suspect fairly quickly we'd run into some interesting limits.
For example, how many particle physicists can the world actually support? There are already more aspiring particle physicists than jobs or academic positions. Throwing more candidates at these positions would raise the bar for acceptance, but it's not like we'd actually get... hordes of additional practicing particle physicists than we have now. We'd also have to invest in more LHC-style experimental opportunities, more doctorate programs, and so on.
Obviously, you can replace "particle physicist" with other cutting-edge big-brain vocation. How many top-tier semiconductor engineers can the world support? I mean, there are only so many cutting-edge semiconductor fabs, and the availability of top-tier semiconductor engineers is not the limiting factor preventing us from making more.
There are also cultural issues. A lot of people just don't trust the whole "establishment" for science and learning these days. Anti-intellectualism is a thing. You can't throw education at that problem when education itself is seen as the problem.
I'm "smart" relative to the general population, but you could have thrown all the education in the world at me and I'd never have become Alexey Petrov.
I have a hunch that the Alexey Petrovs -- the upper 0.001% or whatever -- of the world do tend to get recognized and/or carve out their own space.
I think the ones who'd benefit from your plan would be... well, folks like me. I mean, I did fine I guess, but surely there are millions as smart as me and smarter than me who fell through the cracks in one way or another.
I suspect fairly quickly we'd run into some interesting limits.
For example, how many particle physicists can the world actually support? There are already more aspiring particle physicists than jobs or academic positions. Throwing more candidates at these positions would raise the bar for acceptance, but it's not like we'd actually get... hordes of additional practicing particle physicists than we have now. We'd also have to invest in more LHC-style experimental opportunities, more doctorate programs, and so on.
Obviously, you can replace "particle physicist" with other cutting-edge big-brain vocation. How many top-tier semiconductor engineers can the world support? I mean, there are only so many cutting-edge semiconductor fabs, and the availability of top-tier semiconductor engineers is not the limiting factor preventing us from making more.
There are also cultural issues. A lot of people just don't trust the whole "establishment" for science and learning these days. Anti-intellectualism is a thing. You can't throw education at that problem when education itself is seen as the problem.