The implicit idea of offering a transition to knowledge work as a means for people who have been economically shut out to catch up is a misreading of the situation.
An economy must consist of more than just knowledge workers. If a guy who's stuck stocking shelves in a supermarket gets an education and moves up to a career working at a keyboard, those supermarket shelves still need to be stocked. The supermarket will need to hire someone else to fill that dead end job, and will need to do that again (and again) when/if the next guy with the dead end job gets training and moves up. Repeat.
Repeat for every hands on economic sector that treats its workforce poorly.
As long as low-status need to be done to keep civilization running by keeping food on the shelves, there will be people who cannot be knowledge workers. If there is a solution to help people who do hands-on work catch up, it involves paying them more for the jobs that must be done rather than training them to do other work.
(This does not apply to transitioning workers out of dying industries -- retraining people in this situation is the only reasonable option.)