Interesting question. I know quite a few Reed graduates, they all fit my personal definition of extremely well educated. I'd say the same for graduates of St. John's Colleges as well. In both cases though it seems the well educated part happened before they even arrived at either school. It's more their temperament and their depth and breadth of true knowledge not just trivia, and their interest in developing themselves and assisting those around them. Can't say the same for Yale graduates I've met, most who contribute little to society and are for the most part ignorant. Again we are left with addressing what does it mean to be educated. I might argue that ignorant people are not educated. But what does it mean to be ignorant? There's a lot to such a question and sometimes it's easier to say I know it when I see it.
I think davidw was referring to Steve Jobs, who was registered for just one semester at Reed in the 70s and then hung around for a few more semesters sitting in on whatever classes interested him (including a course on typefaces, which came back into his life when he was working on the Macintosh). He talks about it in the Stanford 2005 graduation address:
Also, your comment Can't say the same for Yale graduates I've met, most who contribute little to society and are for the most part ignorant seems unnecessarily harsh.
The point is I only know a limited number of people from any particular university, as does anyone. From what I have read of Mr. Spolsky, a Yale graduate, he is well educated, but I haven't met him so can't speak too much to that.
It seems it is of intrinsically questionable validity to make sweeping generalizations about whether graduates, attendees, and those merely accepted by any given university are well educated.
Again we end up asking what it means to be educated in the first place. Different people may have different opinions of this as well. Clearly there will be some who believe it has to do with whether one has been to the same class of university as themselves, regardless of what they gained from it. This seems like specious reasoning though.
