Ah I think there might be a trans-Atlantic difference here and we're talking past each-other a little. I'm in the UK where jury selection isn't really a thing, selection is at random off the electoral roll and the filtering is mostly based on who has a good enough excuse to not do it.

That's essentially the exact same system as in the US.

Oh no it is not!

In the UK, lawyers do not get to pick and choose jurors; jurors are entirely random. The only way a juror can be 'excused' is if it turns out they are related to the defendent or something.

Not quite. In every jury selection I've been through, there were people obviously chosen or not chosen for specific attributes, none of which had anything to do with intelligence, level of education, age, etc. Jurors were not chosen at random...only the initial pool of jurors was selected in any "random" fashion. American attorneys try to look for specific characteristics in jurors, depending on the circumstances of the case.

Be careful confusing "has no opinion" with "moron". The voir dire process tries to select for people who have no opinion: it's specifically designed to filter for neutrality, because if the trial hasn't even begun yet and you have an opinion, that's a problem.

There are some people - oftentimes very literate people - that mistake having no opinion for being stupid. It's very far from that. Oftentimes being neutral and keeping your mouth shut is the smartest thing you can do. There's frequently a popular image of someone who is smart as someone who is very quick to form judgments and articulate them with little information; this can be a useful skill in certain situations but is the opposite of what our legal system wants in a juror.

I got booted for having a college degree.

Unless this was a case specifically related to the field your degree is in or there are a very limited number of people with college degrees in your area, I doubt that was the full story.

Having a degree is not an attribute that you can be dismissed "for cause" for, and the attorneys have a limited number of preremptory challenges available. At least in my area, where > 50% have college degrees, if they tried to strike everyone with a college degree they wouldn't have a jury pool left.