In general I agree with your assessment. The US needs a much more nuanced educational system like that in much of Europe. I can't speak to math or business admin or other humanities degrees. I got a BSc in Electrical Engineering (Lamar University).

In the US you have no chance of a career if you don't have at least a bachelor's degree. In Austria, Germany and few other countries I know of, you have multiple different types of schools. You can start an apprenticeship after 8th grade. You can go to a 5 year (after 8th grade) tech or business high schol and then start work with something like an associates degree in the US. You can go to a general 4 year (again after 8th grade) high school. This degree is generally the "definitely going to university degree" path - but you can go after 5 yr. tech/business school as well.

These different paths provide a much larger variety of legitimate career paths. The only caveat is that it is in general VERY hard to get into upper management at a big firm without a university degree, and that usually an advanced degree.

Another even bigger caveat is that university is tax based in Europe, so there are no out of pocket tuition expenses. Very many people study to the limit of their talent and then quit. They and the companies they work for are better for it, but they don't carry 10s of thousands in debt for trying and failing to get a university degree.

I will point out that at Lamar we specifically had to learn the things you learned in your 1st, 3rd, 4th and some of the 5th jobs you had, but that was an engineering degree at a very practically oriented engineering school.

Ironically, although my education was aweseome, I learned in my first job that where you studied makes a huge difference in how much you'll earn. I got a 1st class engineering degree - better than I would have gotten at UT Austin where I started (why I switched is a different story) - but the name UT Austin carried a lot more weight than Lamar University (at least at that time).