IMO, that would qualify him to comment on the system. Unless you have read his book, your judgement sounds a little premature. I think we can all agree that our educational system is way down on the scale compared to other developed countries. His book was an indictment of systemic failure to produce great leadership qualities.
At best it was personal opinion. I didn't hear anything about a study or any data at all. Sounds like a guy who wasn't happy because they gave him too much homework. I didn't hear any ideas about how one goes about teaching "out of the box" thinking. In my opinion, learning Calculus teaches you problem solving, but I doubt that guy would agree with me.
I believe he touched on this, explaining that most students who excelled in Calculus ended up in the stock market to become rich, rather than contibute their analytic powers to solving the worlds economic problems. His critique was that the prominent universities neglected to teach emphasis on public leadership qualities, instead of using their expertise for personal gain. The stock market seems to reflect the brilliance of Economists, whereas the government is full of incompetent administrators at every level. Government is full of politicians, not administrators.
I believe we can agree that the general level of competence in government leadership is less than adequate.
Cutting education budgets or raising tuitions is not the way out of incompetency. I believe it is a problem that can be solved only by calculus. Where are the economic models from concerned "learned leadership"?