[nabla9]

The value in formal education is mostly reading, writing, and thinking skills. How to express and communicate increasingly complex ideas to others. PhD is not much different.

There was just a Reddit post saying that 54% of US adults have a reading level equal to or below a sixth-grade level according to the US Department of Education. Many communication problems can be attributed to differences in prose, document, and numeracy literacy.

"If we want to have an educated citizenship in a modern technological society, we need to teach them three things: reading, writing, and statistical thinking." – H. G. Wells