The benefits are for society, because you upgrade the entire labour force, which allows your country to climb the value-chain and switch to industries with high

The benefits are for society, because you upgrade the entire labour force, which allows your country to climb the value-chain and switch to industries with higher productivity per worker, thus increasing GDP, and so on. The US is generally clueless to this, because there's such a huge influx of talented foreing workers that offset domestic policies, but smaller nations are painfully aware of this, and the ones doing great on global competitiveness are also the ones with the most generous social welfare. This is no coincidence.