The German system indeed has a lot more options between a full blown academic career to learning a craft in a structured 4 year program all the way to being an unskilled laborer with 10 years of school.

The drawback is that career paths are also more structured than in the US and take a long time. Want to start a painting business? Better get your Meisterbrief first and that will take a good while.

Here in the US things are more fluid, which leads to people changing careers and going back to school at a later age more willingly. The flipside is that almost everyone is an amateur and quality of work varies wildly.

There is even a mixture between the two. It was called "Berufsakademie" and recently renamed to "Duale Hochschule". It's basically a 50/50 split between studying at a college and working at a company. The company usually pays the study fees and public transport ticket as well as a somewhat limited but ok salary. The split is usually divided into 'sprints' of ?5? weeks of work followed by ?5? weeks of university.

Here's some of their marketing material:

DHBW possesses the unique characteristic of consistently and deliberately combining academic study with applied learning in the professional world. With this strategy, DHBW provides a route to sought-after academic qualifications while enabling students to gain extensive practical experience. This foundation equips DHBW students and graduates to take on challenging tasks early in their professional careers, helping to launch them on successful career paths.