[lordnacho]

Congrats, you are enlightened. It's sometimes a bit sad to see things for what they are, but it's better than being naive.

If you want to just learn stuff, why not do some Master's degrees? You get close enough to the edge that you'll know a field well, but not so close that you end up spending a lot of time doing politics and advancing very little. You'll also get close enough to soak up advances from people who decided to do phds.