I've come to the conclusion that many people with good paper qualifications are actually just pretty skilled at memorising things for short periods to get through exams, or can churn out a passable essay parroting what they know the markers want to see. They apply no critical thought to what they study at all.
Meanwhile, they accept totally uncritically whatever unevidenced or even frankly incredible stuff they have to believe in to belong to a social group that matters to them, e.g. church, political party, activist group, friendship group, the woke.
This is the only way I can make sense of the reported cases of people with degrees in hard sciences or engineering who are also evolution-denying creationists or anti-vaxxers and biologists and doctors who believe in gendered souls.