Billions of tax dollars later, the geniuses in state government finally figure out that our state public school system, which attempts to put all students on a college track, utterly fails a large number of students and the market.

The South has a shortage of workers to fill middle-skills jobs such as medical technicians and computer support workers, even as many four-year graduates struggle to repay student loans, according to a study released Sunday.

The report released by the National Skills Coalition during the Southern Governors Association meeting in Asheville shows that 51 percent of all jobs in the American South fall into the “middle-skills” category, requiring education and training beyond high school but less than a four-year degree …

In North Carolina, 51 percent of available jobs fall into the middle-skills category. The study says 43 percent of job seekers are able to meet those qualifications.

Panelist James Wiseman, of Toyota Motors Corp., said his company struggles to find qualified workers for jobs as electricians, maintenance, and tool and die technicians – jobs that often pay between $50,000 and $75,000 a year.

This, like many other easily solvable problems in our society, is the creation of political correctness. It is politically incorrect to believe that some students simply aren’t intellectually suited for college — and maybe don’t even have a personal desire to go.

Everyone has to be pounded into that mold or it would simply be unfair. And if some students can’t be pounded into that mold, we obsess about where we as a society have failed them, that it must be discrimination or something. Then we spend billions trying to close educational and intellectual gaps between students that won’t budge … or some idiot judge orders us to spend billions trying to close educational gaps that won’t budge. And after all that, students emerge from the public education system largely unqualified for many of the jobs that exist.

Why can’t we track capable kids into these sorts of technical professions from a young age? Instead of all that teaching to the test, and the endless rounds of testing to assess the teaching, why not use some of that time and money to test kids to see where their capabilities lie? If we’ve got to pay for their education for 12 years, why not teach those who will never be college material the tool and die trade for two years starting in high school?

And speaking of college, Bill Gates is on to something. The days of middle class families paying $200,000 to send their kid to a brick and mortar college so that every feminist studies wacko professor can have tenure must end. Colleges have become little more than a welfare state for those churning out liberal propaganda.

Gates wants most kids of the future to go to to college online — for $2,000 a year, not $20,000. The brick and mortar college system shouldn’t end completely of course. Those on a science track will still need some sort of place to show up physically for labs. The scientific research that colleges and universities churn out is critical. But for liberal arts?

Those classes should be available from and taken online. Parents must demand — and given the shape of the economy soon will demand — that more college degrees be offered online as on option by serious institutions like our state schools. Taxpayers must demand it, too. We just can’t afford this educational mess anymore. Gates says it is terribly inefficient. I agree.