Knowledge is Power?

Or is knowledge on it's own vanity?
Why are there so many people paying several years salary to educate themselves on subjects that are irrelevant to their lives.

Here's a bunch of my money now give me my degree.
My degree that I won't use for anything.
My degree that everyone else who went to college just because that's what you do after high school has, so it doesn't even distinguish me from anyone / anything.
But at least I'm educated now...
And that means I'm smart, and entitled, and better than those who don't have one right?

Application of knowledge and learning from one's experiences is power.
Education for the sake of education is vanity and a waste of resources.

Smart is generally taken for two meanings, educated and wise, book smart and street smart.
True that anyone of these without a hint of the other is worthless, but I think one would be better to have more wisdom than education, and not the other way around.
Which goes against the status quo that I have obverved, and perhaps the route of any problems you may or may not ackowledge this country has.

Men began with very little knowledge, by the grace of God and trial and error have we come this far, and out of street smarts, wisdom, experience, have we come far enough to have men so greatly experienced that they can educate others.

However, a man with all the degrees all the money in this world can buy, but fails to learn or figure out how to apply any of it, is useless, vain, and a waste.

And so we come to a society where men with both education and wisdom are scarce. Men with knowledge and no experience hand down orders through countless middle men to men with much experience but no knowledge of how to turn it into wisdom, and resentment grows on both sides, and this is the beginning of end of men.

There is no solace in this world, there is nothing good to be had by putting your treasure here.
Look higher.