A portion of that argument is probably rooted in a very good intention: the Gini coefficient is far too high right now. One good way go reduce the Gini coeffic

A portion of that argument is probably rooted in a very good intention: the Gini coefficient is far too high right now. One good way go reduce the Gini coefficient is to reduce the praise for roles like CEO, manager, physician, etc and reclaim more respect the technicians of the world. University doesn't really connect anyone with "remarkable" people, but if you come from a rural or low populated area, it does help to let you interact with a more diverse (many professions and ideas) set of people. You're correct that universities don't really have high IQ people (even the grad students, PIs, and professors likely do not have a high IQ these days), but the incentive structure isn't there anymore to allow for this. The publish-or-perish paradigm has basically annihilated the incentive structure for intelligence and now the focus is much more on 'doing' (without much thought). It's pretty simple to see that when looking at the choices in grad students and faculty at places like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. They're not chosen for drive for novelty, or their cleverness, they're chosen for tirelessly working towards very incremental adjustments to ideas that are then marketed as highly impactful and novel - but the biggest determining factor here is being a "hard worker", not intelligence.