Living in the Netherlands, the government wants the people to be higher educated.
In my view there will be a fixed distribution among people, ranging from plain stupid to very smart. The only way to get more people with a higher education is just to lower the requirements. (Unless you are going into eugenetics).
My education is from a HTS "higher technical school" (german equivalent fachhochschule). With the adaption of the anglo-saxon system, this has been relabelled to a University of Applied Science, not being a real university. I think it has been scaled a bit too low, setting it to the equivalent of BEng. Although I admit that the more regarded universities and also the dutch universities are definitely of a higher level, I have met lot of foreign employees with university degrees, at my companies, that I would not even have given an HTS degree (ing.) in the Netherlands, let alone a university degree (ir.). I know, this experience might also be due to filtering, the ones that go abroad are in general more ambitious (in a management sense) and are not that interested in the technical side of things.
Finally, when the Netherlands transferred to the anglo-saxon system, I could transfer my HTS (ing.) degree to an MSc degree (by paying 2000 euro's). Still being naive and thinking that I did not earn a university degree without having the proper education, I rejected, thinking I would be evaluated on my merits. It was also a bit of a shady activity transferring diploma's. Now years later, working for international companies, I notice, it is not what you do but what abbreviation you carry in front/after your name, despite 20 years of experience, a young boy just coming from university (whichever) is more highly regarded. I just should have paid the 2000 Euro's when I could.