Cognitive ability no longer is linked strongly to years of education, concludes a Norwegian study published in published in Scientific Reports, reports Vladimir Hedrih in PsyPost. Expanding access to education could have helped talented people rise above their social class, making Norway more meritocratic, researchers speculated. But it didn’t work that way.

Researchers looked at cognitive tests of males born between 1950 to 1991 and their educational attainment by age 30. The men, who were evaluated as military draftees, were tested on “a range of mental skills and capabilities, including problem-solving, memory, reasoning, and critical thinking,” Hedrih writes.

[We don’t even have to look at Norway, just eyeball anything coming out of the Ivy League or higher education as a whole. ~ Beege]