My life experience and resulting sentiment is extremely similar to yours.

I feel that the education system is deeply flawed and rewards all the wrong things because we refuse to select based on real factors because of political ideology. I think those that are successful become so despite of it, instead of because of it. When you looks at the biographies or people who truly pushed the enveloppe and changed the world, it becomes evident.

We need to ask if the cost of the education system are really worth the rewards. Considering how large that cost has become nowadays, my premilinary anwser would be no. And I feel that the shift to rent seeking economy as well as reduced innovation and iteration speed is deeply linked to that. Most of the recent growth came from IT, a field that was notorious for be full of dropouts. That should tell you something. Now that the field has been innunduated by college graduate, it has shifted to fully extractive behavior.

Any push back against the system is met with suspition because most people feel they should have a shot at making it big, because they are worth it. In practice, it seems that the inequalities never disappear anyway, and people just have to pay more upfront in order to try to prove themselves. In the long run, it mostly end up exactly as it started and society just pay a dear cost for what is basically unproductive behavior.

You behavior remark is quite on the nose, because from my point of view this is exactly how tyrannies are created. If you get rewarded too much for simply being obedient to the autority in place, overtime any other strategy gets pennalised dispropotionally and you end up with a bunch of sycophant you will never push back against the order, no matter how bad the decisions/rules get.