Education is an important support and a strategic precursor for the promotion of the building of a powerful country. This study, based on a regression analysis, as well as the internationally comparable data on cognitive skills in 159 countries and regions from 1960 to 2020, finds that the average years of education no longer had a significant effect on the long-term economic growth; in contrast, educational quality had a significant effect on the economic growth over all the periods. In the twenty-first century, influenced by skill-biased technological progress, high-income economic entities promote economic growth mainly by relying on the accumulation of high-level human capital. In the stage of high-income development, the increase of the proportion of highly skilled students can significantly promote economic growth. From the perspective of the economic value of education, the fundamental goal of education is to boost the substantive development of human skills. The double improvement of the overall skills of the population and the proportion of the highly skilled population through the systematic reform of education is a vital way to promote the building of China into a powerful country in education. To this end, we need to focus on improving students’ overall skills and cultivating top-notch innovative talents, establish a high-quality education system, increase teachers’ salaries, and build the value-added evaluation system for the whole process of education and the tracking and monitoring system for the whole-life development of people’s skills.