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It's comparing apples to lamps. First of all, it depends on the job you're dealing with. For some jobs, it's perfectly reasonable to go straight to "experience" right out of high school. For others, it's much more important to have a higher education. Beyond that, higher education is about far more than just learning more facts. It's about further developing your critical thinking skills and getting more exposure to other forms of thought.
A liberal arts education may not make someone a better worker, but it certainly exposes people to the basics of more fields and can lead to greater cultural understanding, among other things.
Regarding the college graduate dismissing your experience in Africa, a big part of that may have had more to do with a character flaw on his part than the result of his education. It's also very likely that you were each discussing from a totally different point of view, without realizing your views are not necessarily contradictory. It's kind of like pro-life people arguing with pro-choice people: the debate goes nowhere because they're not even talking about the same thing. Likewise, with many topics it's easy for an academic to see only the big picture while someone with only experience sees only the "reality" of the details. The truly intelligent and successful are those who can combine the two.
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Le temps détruit tout
"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling
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