said by astirusty :

In fairness the guy may not have actually been borderline retarded, he just appeared that way to you because of his "higher" education. I have found that hands-on technical types (without degrees) have a very hard time relating to those hands-off theoretical academic types (with degrees).

As others have pointed out the relating problems stem from universities filling students heads with lots of academic ideas that have little relationship to the real world (the world outside the hollowed halls). Of course you can not expect much else when the professors themselves rarely have held a non-academic job. An inbreeding problem - students learning theory from theorists who learned from theorists, and so-forth. A good example of wasted learning is the use of the APA style format for papers, just about an absolutely requirement in universities, but I never saw our company (and two associated companies) even remotely promote the APA style in 20 years.

The other relating problems stem from people with degrees who come into a work area and decided that just because they have a degree and those around them do not; that they are smarter and therefore should call the shots.

said by jp10558 :

...I have noticed to some extent that there is something that people with a college degree (though, again, not everyone - this is why the presence or lack of a piece of paper isn't a good way to judge someone) are better at finding information.

To elaborate, there is a knack to figuring out where to start. Sure, anyone can type into google, but there is a lot of time in college spent understanding how to "rate" a source - reliable or not. Also, there's a lot of time spent understanding the difference between a primary and secondary source.