This seems to equate "smart" with academic success. What about the smart people who are not academically successful? Some of them go somewhere; others go nowher

This seems to equate "smart" with academic success. What about the smart people who are not academically successful? Some of them go somewhere; others go nowhere, but they'd have a different profile. One that I've seen all over the place: 10. A smart person with the misfortune of ending up in the average class is likely to be noticed by a teacher and put on the honors track. A smart person who ends up in a mediocre department of a mediocre company (lack of ambition, poor interviewing skills, geography, low self-esteem) is likely to fail out, and have a damaged resume after doing so. He's now competing against fresh 22-year-olds, and he's a 24-year-old who worked some unimpressive accounting job and got fired. School is designed to notice and nurture talent. Sometimes it fails, but it makes a solid and noble effort, and probably succeeds more often than it fails. By contrast, the corporate world is much less interested in, or capable with, this process, because business people are generally bad at telling apart the few who actually are talented from the many who think they are. Also, the corporate world is only interested in nurturing talent that satisfies an immediate need of the business.