When I dropped out all of my teachers said "you know, some of the smartest and successful people dropped out" etc. The fact that "education" is compulsory isn't really a good indicator, depending on what kind of abilities we're talking about. Years of "knowledge" "accumulated" sounds a little unmalleable. A ship in a harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are for. On the other hand, standardization, setting a low enough or average enough common denominator, socialization, behavior modification, etc are all features of the education system which do provide some utility. I'll be the first to say an org or team of outliers isn't generally going to be effective.