back in the day of tesla , edison, stienmetz farraday is proof that the education system is totally fucked up and fucked around today not only that but the mentality of people
our leaps in technology were done in those days tesla only had raw steel copper, wood and wire to work with, they had real hads on knowledge not idiotic quantamn theory quantam insanity nonsense floating around there textbooks as a distraction
Yes, because the Kepler space telescope, the Hubble space telescope, the (soon to be launched) James Webb telescope, the moon landing, mars rover explorers, the LHC, etc.. etc... are not hands-on and are completely stagnant to our knowledge of the universe around us

The people working on these projects are the result of education, not necessarily American education, but education nonetheless.
Perhaps you should get your hands on a textbook, or at least use Google to find out the current HANDS ON research out there.