Yes.
People seem willing to denigrate a college education, but there are certain professions that just cannot be accommodated by trade schools or OJT.
Just cannot be done.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t people out there who could do nearly anything, because some people are just brilliant. But that isn’t something you can bank on.
I will say, though, that may be one of the reasons things are in such a dire way, because the quality of an education is being diluted not because people are stupider, which I don’t think is any truer today than it might have been 100 years ago, but because the people designing the educational process today value education far less than virtue signalling.
I think you mean that it is not because people are less intelligent. They are definitely stupider.
The American Revolution was a giant step away from the tyranny of monarchy, in great part due to the size of the Atlantic Ocean. The fact that the Revolution did not solve all social injustices is hardly justification for today's under-informed youth to reject it.
It took about ninety years for the majority of Americans to support taking up arms to kill Southerners, resulting in the end of slavery.
It's been thirty years since Kalifornia made it a felony for me to put a plastic pistol grip on my rifle. It's still illegal.