I work in a field where the lowest entry qualification is a 4 year degree in a hard science with a long list of required classes, mostly in chemistry. The lowest level people there all have 4 year degrees and an understanding of chemistry far beyond the average person. To have your work be taken seriously there you need either a PhD or 10+ years of experience. You'll find more PhDs walking through just one of the cubicle areas than you will an entire classroom building on a college campus. Everyone I work with could easily be described as "well-educated".

Now I work with many likeable and overall "smart" people, but if there is one socially related thing I have learned working here it is that education =/= intelligence. I know plenty of people who have forgotten more than I will ever know about things like the chemistry of binding a nanometer thick layer of silver to a polymer film, or how to precipitate perfectly spherical 100 micron plastic beads out of acetone solutions who are otherwise absolute imbeciles in all other aspects of life. The stupidest person I have ever met in my life is someone I work with who has a PhD and a post-doc. He asks questions about things like cleaning his kitchen that could be answered by applying a third grade level of common sense. I kid you not, once he was telling me about how he had spilled some cake batter on his counter yet no matter how many times he wiped it down there were still greasy bits of flower caked on he couldn't remove. "Did you use the rough side of the sponge?" I asked. "No, I never thought to try that."

But I'm ranting now...

I hate the appeal to authority argument surrounding education and venerating more educated people as being inherently more intelligent than others. Someone's level of education is more an indicator of family wealth than intelligence. Just because someone has achieved a deep understanding of one thing does not make them an authority on others. One of my favorite quotes is "An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until eventually they know everything about nothing."