[watwut]

"Depending on the construction worker's experience he may or may not know a heck of a lot more about what works and what doesn't on the job site."

Absolutely. And military veteran knows a heck of a lot more about how army works. Neither of them knows enough about building statics nor how to evaluate whether ground is good enough to hold tall building. Neither of them knows about history of country the war was in, something you would expect from journalist.

People that do x know more about x then people who dont, but that does not make construction job reasonable choice if you wants to be architect.

Neither of them was forced to learn hundreds of pages of stuff every semester, something that makes college graduate more likely to be able to learn similar amount of similar difficult stuff again. Part of it is selection bias, but part of it is that good college makes you used to having to learn a lot.