Is smart defined by level of education attained? I have employed high school graduates as computer technicians, that can run circles around physicians with respect to operating computers, repairing them, and linking them together, even though the physician spent 4 years in college, 4 years in medical school, 4 years in residency, and a year in fellow-up ultimately becoming an "expert" in one narrow part of the field of medicine. As soon as the issue extends beyond their narrow field of medicine, they refer the patients to another physician, who happened to study a different narrow field of medicine.
I have employed PhDs, that somewhere in their training lost their common sense. They were so fascinated in studying a problem, they often failed to ask themselves why the problem was relevant.
What I think is fair to say about most academics is that they possess a quality that many other people don't. Most of them, enjoy learning for the sake of learning, however, this "curiosity" is often narrowly focused. Many study aspects of the universe where there are no practical applications, simply for the sake of exploring the universe. They often dive so deep down the "proverbial" rabbit hole, that they almost don't function in regular society.
Perhaps the best way to describe academics, especially those with PhDs is that they had the qualities needed to devote one's life to a field of study. One of my professor friends spent most of his life studying the wars that took place in western Europe between 1645 and 1815. He spent 60 years studying everything he could on the subject, wrote numerous books on his findings, and taught cadets at the Sandhurst Military College in the UK. I love history and when this man spoke about what happened between 1645 and 1815 on the battlefields of western Europe, no doubt he was the smartest person in the room.
But devoting so much of his life to studying and teaching on this narrow subject, meant he was far less aware of many things that the average person on the street with a more general interest in things knew.
It is not without some truth, that academics work "in ivory towers". As long as they do what they are supposed to do, someone has decided to fund them. But unless they are capable of supporting themselves without requiring income from an institution, foundation, or some other third party, they are not really free to discover truth, but more often employed to promote some orthodoxy.
