I'd been happy if the education system pick a side and either focus on career preparation or humanity enrichment. But nowadays it pretends to do both and failed at them miserably.
Thus I can't help but think that the system is just a giant marketing scheme to make $140 off a hardworking family.
"The higher educational system is the only authority in America which is socially permitted to discriminate based on IQ, via entrance requirements. This is pretty useful, and accordingly everyone else pays them astounding amounts of money to do it. Given that they have a monopoly on discriminating based on IQ, they don't need to do anything else well."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_gratification
See also the marshmallow test on that page. Too bad we don't (systematically) teach our kids stuff like this along with the regular curriculum.
I know of no evidence that delaying gratification can be taught with any degree of effectiveness. The original study used babies, who were later tracked through (well-predicted) success or failure in life. Control of one's impulses appears to be a very basic "brain organ" with rather limited capacity for training.
The original kids in the study were 4 years old.
The famous lawsuit which resulted in this situation:
http://supreme.justia.com/us/401/424/case.html
That is when employers were officially prohibited from using IQ tests. Our current situation is a direct result of this.