I have no clue how general this is, but I won't be surprized this goes well beyond just a single country.

It is similar in Finland too where the education is supposedly 'brilliant' yet, for the most part, they are unable to apply it to create something new (on average). We see a lot of innovation in the world and believe it to be the norm but, we live in a world of cherry-picked information with mass exposure.

I would suggest that take out the publicity and we would soon discover we are much more average than we believe. Much like if we took away the news cherry picking the most violent crimes from around the globe, the world will seem a lot more safe than we are led to believe.