The problem of perceived failure in regards to public education system has multiple factors. In the West, the problem is primarily the loss of their original purpose due to assent by the political class in dismantling their socio-cultural identity by the jaded intelligentia. In addition, the extension of childhood into mid-twenties by legal and economic subsidies results in Western schools essentially transforming these "places of learning" into little more than daycare and a little less than prison. Thus, the seemingly endless production of ill-educated, over-emotional, amorphic waste of meat-bags possessing little to no employable skills.

More significantly, the lack of character formation and cultural identity installation within the school system gives birth to a society that equates jobs/occupation with individual identity. The sentiment towards a buffet style schooling system in your post is but a symptom of a society populated by men who are reduced to commidities to be traded among impersonal corporations. I suppose drones without identity can easily be coerced to acquiesce to slavery and be persuaded to comsume products they neither desire nor need.

Is occupational competence beneficial for the drones? Yes. Is academic success helpful for drones to live a comfortable existence? Yes. Should education system shift towards imparting only "necessary" information for future drone working class? Yes, since these drones will never climb out of their self-imposed caste prison.

If the inquiry is whether the current education system is capable of training humans, then the answer is that the current academic millieu is antithetical to formation of a man, as conceptualized by ancient philiosophers.