There is difference between being educated and having an education.

Anyone can go through the motions of going to school and pass the classes, it doesn’t take too much effort, but if you can’t apply it to improve your life what’s the point? To tell others what you learned which is really just reciting what other people did, do you want a cookie because you remembered something?

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hartfire

It's hard to survive a Western lifestyle without literacy and numeracy - so even the most basic of primary school education is a bare minimum.

But would you like doctors to treat you if they hadn't studied medicine and uni and done their practise as interns?
If you needed a lawyer would you want one who had never studied law?
Would you trust the research of a self-proclaimed scientist who knew nothing about scientific method?

When we call someone "educated" it is too broad a term to mean much, but it usually means they've completed something at a tertiary level and have learned how to research and evaluate. These are useful skills in all aspects of life, even if the qualification is in the humanities or from a low-grade uni.