Wellll, I'm not sure. We *do* let a lot of people into our schools, but we tend to let them out pretty quick too. Some un-Godly percentage of kids get bumped out of my university yearly. Admin's attitude can be summed up thus:
"Thanks for the ten grand! Bye!'
It tends to keep the quality up. Outside of first and second year classes, there are almost nothing but sharp kids. Even if they aren't sharp and are just scooting by, they're still educated to a greater degree than they would have been otherwise. That pays subtle dividends for your culture later. If we can make this possible without driving people to kill themselves, so much the better.
As for those Asian schools, you are totally correct. They push out some excellent, excellent graduates. It's almost an engineering problem. Trade off X number of dead high school kids and people who form a caste with no access to post-secondary, against Y number of high quality graduates.
On the whole, I pefer the North American approach. I'll probably have nothing but Indian and Chinese bosses for the rest of my career, but that's just the way it is.
ONe of the reasons I have always admired Asian cultures-particularly Japan, China, and I include India after some personal study, is that they mirror the Western attitude of serious hard work will get great rewards later in life-a kind of "Protestant Work Ethic".
Where we differ is that our lower social classes have much greater access to higher ed. than theirs-any trip to the area (I have heard from friends and my studies in college) shows that rigid class systems still exist, even in utopia China.
While in college a Japanese student I knew stated that they of course study and work harder in high school than any average American, but then go totally wild in their university and just party-most of their universities are free to all who qualify, and the academic rigor is low. While we are known by Hollyleftwood as people who love to party in college, I noticed students who get into college are forced by the stricter curriculum to step up or fail, most successfull students find the mature balance between party and study that the Asian students do not learn in their colleges.
T-have faith, my wife works in the tech field with lots of Indians and Muslims from their premier schools-smart guys, but few ever make it to management-no racism, but it takes more than tech skills to be a leader, business person and innovator. They are kind of like warrant officers in the Army. They are best in the motor pool or tech field, just don't ever take them out of their feeding ground, your asking for disaster!