Education (and inflated government) is a new way of signaling a higher social state, similar to scholastic priesthood of the past.
It is entirely a social construct (aside from practical, concrete-math-based STEM and engineering).
Another real-life aspect is that passing through a really decent schools like MIT or Caltech (or Yale, as an exception) is a proof (by example) that one is capable of self-discipline, concentration, self-improvement, able to do research and learn on by doing.
Aside from that a degree is just and merely a social status certificate, a certificate of belonging to a higher social class (no matter actual skills and abilities).
I myself am from a third-world social shithole and never went to a high school. I could, however, beat a vast majority of so-called liberal arts majors and even some Stanford grads, which I regularly did on this very site before CoCs and bans for use of an "inappropriate" language.
So, there is nothing much to talk about. A crappy degree is a social status certificate, and obsession with language usage, long-words and polit-correctness and fancy abstract terminology is merely a signaling of assumed, self-proclaimed (and almost always absent) virtue.