Disciplined Minds is a great read.
Early on the book discusses some data that indicates more highly educated people tend to be more supportive politically of the government than the population in general. (E.g. during the Vietnam war lawyers defending anti-war activists in the US were trying to figure out how to pack juries with people who would be favorable to their clients and discovered that roughly the more educated someone was, the more likely they supported the government and would disapprove of anti war activism)
The book makes the argument that gaining professional credentials is less about gaining knowledge/skills, but more about demonstrating that one can be trusted to work in an organisational and confirm to the assigned goals/ideology of that organisation.
One rough argument made in the book is for workers performing roles with work that can be completely specified by superiors, it's less necessary for workers to demonstrate they can conform to how their employer wants them to think, provided they do the work. For professional roles involving more intellectual work where an employee's day to day tasks cannot be completely specified in advance, it's important for such employees to demonstrate they can think how the organisation wishes them to think, so an important part of training for these roles is essentially political training.
