My own impression, having met plenty of all kinds of people across the globe, is that generally modern education has stripped people of true intellectuality. It has burdened them with plenty of information and very little ability to think or even reason, let alone use higher discernment and other faculties now dormant in nature. Modern education has perfected the art of fooling people by giving the illusion of knowledge. The result is snobbishness and not knowledge, degree and information, rather than the power to think. In many ways, it has closed them to the true intellectual movement, which, anyway, is rare. A true intellectual is, as the Upanishad says, humble, because the more he knows, the more he discovers that there is no end to knowledge. Personally, I have found very few intellectuals among the educated. Most of the people whose intelligence shone and stood out were hiding behind the garb of simplicity rather than wearing the apparently impressive but hollow robe of degrees.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
