I read an interview[1] with the general secretary of German trade and he lamented that in Germany for many, many years the consensus was that more and more people had to study. Thias was also because the OECD said so, not just German politicans. He says we don't need so many people who go to university, and I wholeheartedly agree. And this is coming from Germany where the education system is a lot more forgiving than in the US/UK etc. (in that you don't need to study STEM to earn good money, and studies are cheap) But I think in the coming years there will be a lot of rethinking about these things.

[1]https://www.spiegel.de/start/ausbildung-im-handwerk-in-den-k...