America’s preference for common wisdom over book learning is a strength, not a weakness. Formal education filters for risk averse, process and credential-oriented people. And you need some of those people, but you don’t want your society to be like India where you worship credentials and degrees like religion.
The GI bill isn’t a counterpoint. GI’s still had to gain admissions at a time when colleges were far more selective than today: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2024/01/23/why_college... (undergraduate IQs fell from 119 in 1939 to just 102 in 2022). So you created a filter that was extremely rigorous. It supported college education for people who were both significantly smarter than average, and also had served in the military—the Marcus Aurelius type.
'Clement said that hotels limit speeds to restrict peer-to-peer downloading, and suggested that universities do the same. “I don’t think it would be the end of the world if universities provided service at a speed that was sufficient for most other purposes but didn’t allow the students to take full advantage of BitTorrent,” he said. “I could live in that world."'
Insane. So Sony's lawyer is arguing that every university student should have sub-broadband internet speeds simply because a small fraction of the students infringes copyright.