I totally disagree that the purpose of education is to select people but not to educate them. I usually feel embarrassed when facing the naiveness of a top student in a top university in China, especially when they want to show off that they are better than those students with a lower GPA or in a university with a lower rank. I call this kind of behavior "the folly of youth". I believe the two things that could define people correctly are their ability and morality, not just their GPAs, which mainly or even only reflect the limited ability to learn from labeled data, and not just their ranks, which are only determined by a paper test called "college entrance examination". This stupid thinking mode makes our education system totally rotten, as well as the mind of researchers nowadays! I am not from a top-ranked university in the world and I do not have a full-marked GPA, as same as many legends in my research area.
As a researcher, in my very limited time for doing research in science, probably less than 80 years, my main job is to expand the human knowledge base, create techniques to boost human industry power, and pass our knowledge and useful lessons to the next generation. I believe only by doing this can we change our out-of-date education system and narrowed thinking style one day.
I think it begins with us teaching via free-to-reach courses to everyone who really wants to learn something, alongside our open minds to spread knowledge and warm hearts to communicate with people and support them from different backgrounds!