Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

Bachelor Degrees need a complete rethink, it was basically modified finishing school for rich capital owners, needing to make their children of proper class before they could take over their businesses.

It then became a vocational degree for the working class, despite being completely detached from useful skills for a wide swathes of degrees. The only value is that you could talk the talk and become a member of the professional managerial class if you impressed the right hiring committee/individual.

In spite of this, we decided the working class should take out crippling loans to pay for this degree, and be in debt for the rest of their working life.

It's not sustainable, and just forgiving the debt only will make it all more expensive and less aligned with actual results we desire (useful workers).

In order to rethink Bachelor Degrees, one must first rethink high school. It is routine in the US to see schools where 1) <=5% of the student body is proficient in math; but also 2) the school has a 90% graduation rate.

If that's high school, then it's useless, both as a signal, but also just because, you know, nobody is learning anything. You pretty much have to have some other place for smart people to demonstrate that they're smart.