I wonder if it could possibly have escaped your notice that Donald Knuth, Djikstra, Peter Norvig, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Linus Torvalds and Guido Van Rossum a

I wonder if it could possibly have escaped your notice that Donald Knuth, Djikstra, Peter Norvig, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Linus Torvalds and Guido Van Rossum all possess Masters degrees and above. And these are only luminaries in the field of computer science. It seems to me that the smartest and most productive people on the planet tend to have undergone higher education. I can only conclude that your experience with Masters and PhDs has been strangely skewed.