Reducing the importance of education to status games seems to me as a pretty absurd notion, considering that how educated a population is has an important (if o

Reducing the importance of education to status games seems to me as a pretty absurd notion, considering that how educated a population is has an important (if often hard to precisely measure) impact in the technological and social development of a civilization. What evidence do you have of this? Further, even if true, you are still measuring the inputs rather than the outputs. Energy consumption is also highly correlated with the technological and social development of a civilization, but it would be as silly thing to include.