Rhinoceros (Act 2) QQC

Quote: "All you get at the universities are effete intellectuals with no practical knowledge of life."
-Botard, Rhinoceros, Act 2 Scene 1.

Question!: What base does this statement act upon? Does Ionesco himself think that people who go to college are just characterless-sticks who don't know anything about the real world? I mean, I'm pretty sure in that time, there were people that graduated from universities who were well aware surroundings. [Note: the characters in this scene are arguing whether or not the rhinoceros from Act 1 really was real. Botard, the man who denies the existence of the rhinoceros is a former schoolteacher, who is a "See it to believe it" kind of man.]

Comments: I think Botard hasn't the right to say whether or not people who graduated from universities are dead people or not. The man is nearly 60, and things can change in a matter of decades. I wonder when he had to graduate from a university, his fellow classmates were people who only dug their noses into large, rather heavy, books and only knew about the real world from them. Kind of like in science fiction movies, where people live underground. You know, the ones who are always like "Oh I've heard stories about the surface. It seems interesting, but i like it better down here."