On my perspective, as a first year student in education, I think that is not only an important question nowadays but a good one.
I think that as educators we must be reminded that the sovereign aim of education is to build/develop a childs character for the better. Which is what we can master through the knowledge of psychological personalities, developmental psychology, and our own experiences. That is how education can be sustained academically.
Politically, we have to strive for freedom. It is important that learners/students are free from oppression, dictates, dogma, suppression, and all other anti-development atrocities like alienation. Learners and educators should be free at all costs so that they can be free individuals. We must advocate freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and diversity. To free students is not enough, we must free individual students because an individual is more sovereign in society than a group. I think that is essential for the survival of proper education.
Socially, I think that universities, colleges, and schools are small communities, if we can let them know what education is, why is it important and show them how much they are worth/ they will be worth carrying or living by the communities motto. We must make them trust us and the education system. When they do they will expand that belief on the outside world; on the broader communities. If the belief is true they will gain support, that support will be and is essential for the maintenance of our education material structures and that of belief. This would make education part of life itself, which is.
Economically, if we keep our promises, speak the truth, and bear the responsibility of the education we want to keep and need, then it can be a lot easy not to deceive or be deceived when it comes to financing education. In this, it is important to not unnecessarily make education expensive or cheap because that would be corruption. And corruption festers like disease. We must not turn a blind eye on the corrupt for that is how we become corrupt ourselves.
Through observations, I think that from primary school levels up to high, school is focused on the development of a character and the colleges and universities train those characters for their chosen careers. And education is what maintains a society and it is what reflects it.
Answering- ' How can we make education today an education for life, not just for achievement.'