Of course several million people coming from poverty have had good outcomes via education. Heck, I moved myself from a 3rd world country to a first world country. But for the vast majority college education is inaccessible. Even the state sponsored free primary education is pretty much inaccessible with absent teachers and barely functioning schools.

BTW, Malaysia is a middle income country. Visit some of the displaced tribal communities in India and you will have a different perspective.

Half the women in this Indian state are illiterate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_In_Bihar

There are 2M college graduates in a population of 100M. That's almost 1/3 the size of US population.