I think this is an important thing to keep in mind, and likely the main reason I personally never finished my BA.
I'm lucky to have a good job in tech now, but my skills for my job are all self taught; nothing came from High School or University education.
Also like you said, I've met a lot of dumb people who went to college and even more bright people who didn't, and when I have interviewed and hired people both past and present I don't even consider whether they went to university or even finished high school as I think many of us know people who didn't that could do any job as long as you train them well.
I think universal access to post-secondary education is great, but 1) it's not the end all and be all, and 2) you need to have the prerequisites to be successful at it such as a good high school education, a stable personal life, and most importantly, a stable source of income; university may be universal here but students still have to rent, pay for food, have leisure time, etc. and if people are only making 60K ARS/month working 40 hours imagine how poorly paid part time work is.