It’s back to school season. And the Free Press recently published the convocation remarks of the president of the University of Austin Texas (UATX). In those remarks, President Carvalho invokes Thomas Jefferson:
"Jefferson proposed a model school where each year, quote, ‘Twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish.’ Bold phrasing aside, Jefferson’s point was crucial: Let the best rise from any condition, and educate them deeply for the common good. That, to us, is the most American solution to the reality of human inequality."
There’s an intuitive appeal to the idea that if we can identify the brightest minds, nurture them in the best institutions, and unleash their talent, everyone will benefit. We want to find the people who will discover breakthroughs in medicine, lead technological revolutions, and practice transformative leadership. Jefferson’s argument is that education’s highest duty is to find those few and raise them up for the common good.
But Jefferson overestimates how much innovation results from individual genius versus robust institutions and what Brian Eno calls ‘scenius’ — the collaborative intelligence of creative communities. After all, a great surgeon is only as effective as the skilled nurses, technicians, and administrators who surround her. An innovative engineer still needs master machinists to bring designs to life.
In the decades we’ve spent insisting that “excellence” is implicitly an academic or scholarly phenomenon, we’ve simultaneously neglected to cultivate a clear path to excellence throughout the rest of the economy. But there was another road we could have taken. When I was researching my recent pieces on the Swiss education system, I was confronted with an alternative history that laid out a different way to think about and develop excellence.
Building Excellence in Every Role
Beginning in the 60s and 70s and continuing through the 1990s, many countries focused on expanding academic high school education and access to higher education—especially bachelor’s degree programs. The Swiss did something different. Instead of expanding the academic side of their education system, they built out their vocational education system. They created Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS). These universities are a distinct sector of the Swiss higher education system, focusing on practical, profession-oriented education and research. I think this marketing copy from a website promoting studying in Switzerland describes them well:
“The one private and eight public Swiss universities of applied sciences and arts are closely linked to the economy, culture and society…Professors and lecturers come directly from the field, bringing along comprehensive scientific qualifications…If you like to interact with professors who bring in know-how from real-life implementation, and who refer to concrete cases from actual practice rather than theoretical model cases, this is the right place for you.”
If you read on, they note that “The study programmes build upon the pre-existing practical competencies of their students. They offer a scientific reflection and further development by connecting theoretical content with the concrete practical work experience students have already gained.” (emphasis added)
These universities are primarily designed to serve young people who chose an apprenticeship route. Not students who attended an academic high school. These students apprenticed at companies and attended vocational school from roughly ages 16-18. They have 3-4 years of work experience when they arrive, and the universities of applied sciences take them to the next level in their fields.
In addition to creating these universities for more advanced professional and technical training, the Swiss also designed a mechanism to make sure apprentices would be ready for it called the Federal Vocational Baccalaureate. This is an optional set of coursework and exams apprentices can take during or after their apprenticeship. Earning the vocational baccalaureate allows apprentices to enroll at the universities of applied sciences.
Why did the Swiss create such a robust vocational and professional education system? Because it’s what their economy demanded -
“These choices made reflected knowledge about the kind of labor force needed to fuel the Swiss economy: highly skilled, proud, professionally trained technicians who would come out of the VET system and go on to hone even greater applied skills in the UAS.”1
Contrast that attitude to Thomas Jefferson’s idea of university serving to divide the best from the rubbish. In Switzerland, no one is treated as disposable. Excellence exists in every occupation and profession. It’s not something that is confined to the academic side of the house. Switzerland is a small country, and they need to educate nearly all of their young people to an extremely high level if they want to compete in the global marketplace.
America Chose Academic Hierarchy Instead
Compare this with the history of vocational education in the U.S. In the mid-20th century, vocational education was alive and well in American high schools. Shop class, home economics, auto repair—these were fixtures of the 1950s and 60s. But vocational education in this era carried a strong stigma. It was often seen as the track for students who were not “college material.” Guidance counselors and administrators steered working-class students, especially students of color, into vocational courses, while academic tracks were reserved for those destined for college. This structure reflected Jefferson’s old logic: identify the few who can climb the academic ladder, and sort everyone else accordingly.
By the 1970s and 80s, two forces collided. First, the civil rights and women’s rights movements put pressure on schools to abandon discriminatory tracking systems that limited opportunity. Second, the economy was shifting. Deindustrialization hollowed out many of the secure, well-paying jobs that vocational education had once reliably led to. In this context, vocational programs became associated with low expectations and dead ends. Reformers began talking less about vocational education and more about college prep.
The phrase “college for all” really took off in the 1990s and 2000s. High school reform was judged by how many students took advanced academic classes, how many passed algebra by ninth grade, and how many enrolled in four-year colleges. At the same time, the newly rebranded “career and technical education” (CTE) tried to shed the baggage of “vo-tech.” Federal Perkins funding pushed CTE to integrate more academics, emphasize “high skill, high wage, high demand” pathways, and connect with community colleges. But the hierarchy remained clear: academic pathways led to prestige and power, while CTE was tolerated as a second-best option.
The college side of the house expanded rapidly. From the 1960s through today, bachelor’s degrees became the default expectation for the middle class. Colleges themselves reinforced this by marketing four-year degrees as the ticket to upward mobility and status. Even community colleges, originally founded to provide a mix of academic transfer and vocational training, have increasingly been measured by transfer rates into universities rather than by the quality of their technical programs.
Pathways to Excellence
In recent years, though, cracks have started to show. Student debt, underemployment among college graduates, and employer complaints about skill shortages have prompted a renewed interest in CTE and apprenticeships. In fact, advocates in America’s ‘pathways movement’ are now calling for every student to be on a pathway to a high-quality career. But the cultural weight of Jefferson’s framing is still with us: the idea that academic excellence belongs to the few, while vocational skill is for everyone else. Unlike the Swiss, Americans have rarely built systems that presume excellence in every occupation.
But I think we can get there! Because this idea is easy for people to grasp in other contexts. We understand that a football team can’t win with an excellent quarterback and mediocre players in every other position. On a D&D campaign you don’t want a party that’s all wizards. You need your tank, healer, and damage dealer too. When we are playing together on a team with a common goal, we want to be playing with the best teammates. We respect and appreciate each other’s varying strengths and skills because they all contribute in their own way to our success. We just need to apply the same thinking to our economy and schools.
In his remarks, President Carvalho asks this question, “How do we respect every person’s equal dignity and opportunity while also recognizing and cultivating individual excellence?” His answer is to hold high standards for academic excellence at UATX. Because it is the “best way to make our institution excellent, our country excellent, and our future free.”
I agree that we need to hold high standards for academic excellence. But this is not all we need to do. We also need to hold high standards for vocational and technical excellence. And in addition to the UATX’s of the world, we need institutions that can develop them.
Because our country will not be excellent and our future will not be free if we create an education system that says excellence belongs only to the few.
This piece was written as part of the Progress Studies 2025 Blog Building Intensive. Thank you to Mike Riggs for the excellent editing and to fellow Colleen Smith for the feedback.
Nancy Hoffman and Robert Schwartz, “Gold Standard: The Swiss Vocational Education and Training System” (Washington, DC: National Center on Education and the Economy, 2015).
The relation of 'scenius' to our labor forces is absolutely brilliant, and now that you've said it, it automatically back-solved a bunch of phenomena I'd seen but never had a word for. Thank you, and thanks for rebutting Jefferson!