The smartest people I know either didn't go to college or went to some small no name college but they have the qualities that the Harvard people do not: ethics, morals, and work ethic. The people that attend these institutions are technically smart but they never took a break from learning or obtaining advanced degrees or using other peoples money to see what life looks like for the middle class, the class of people many of them came from and have abandoned and left behind when they entered.

What do academics and elites actually produce? They produce theories, algorthm's, think tanks, etc,, jobs that wield power and control but really produce nothing tangible like the middle class.