Divergent discourses in education affecting social investment policies are driven by disparate perceptions of education as value, whether societal, individual, or by restructuring definitions of human capital beyond truncated utility measurements. In that context, powerful policy actors are making decisions based on their class cohort experience of what education should be, resulting in distinguishing evaluative properties that design education policy typologies to fit. Tightly framed within Rittel and Webber’s (1973) Wicked Problems and extrapolated across international education policy, are competitive academic performance outcomes, reflected by GDP increases that act as dimensions of national positioning within the global market. Panel regression findings from 14 years of world economic, vocational, and academic enrollment data reveal that academic education alone has no impact on GDP, but academics accompanying Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) does impact powerfully. Findings also reveal that every TVET enrollment proportionately increases overall academic enrollment, but not the inverse; while adoption of academic only investment increases poverty, negatively affecting GDP growth.