Not exactly. My remarks are in reference to the difference between job training and education. There are a lot of hardworking folks who have done very well financially and may only have a high school or junior college education, specialized job training, or they may be self taught. They may have studied at four year university or college in a discipline that allowed them to go out and find a financially rewarding job with a bachelors degree or less. On the other hand traditional liberal arts education is aimed not so much at preparing one to enter the workforce as it is at developing the ability to think logically and critically, and from that comes improved judgement. This kind of education is less about job training and more about preparing a person for further more specialized studies in which critical, and independent thinking is paramount. Neither path is superior but these two different pathways tend to produce different kinds of people. If two people, one from each path, are confronted with the same information, they are likely to reach very different conclusions in situations where it is impossible for both to be right.
It is easy to think of exceptions to these quite general observations. For example, Gore Vidal (deceased), a well known Twentieth Century, intellectual, politician, playwright, essayist and writer of fiction based on history never attended college. But he but did grow up without his nose never being for long out of a book, and he did study at one of the nations most academically rigorous and demanding high schools. There are also excellent examples of tradesmen who have read and studied widely on there own and educated themselves far beyond what their vocation demanded. It is not how one develops intellect and critical thinking skills that matters, but that one has some how done it. A pearl of great price is not obtained for the asking.
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