>>>Studwell notes that when Taiwan was moderately prosperous and dominated by industry half of the workforce could not even read. What really benefited East-Asia was a grey-collar culture, a national, egalitarian educational system and corporatism rather than a white-collar, classist and academic culture more common in say, England.

The rise of industrialization in the states was driven by an educated work force from England that was low on supplies and materials, so they immigrated to the USA which had an abundance of supplies and materials.

When the English workers that were educated in various industrialization techniques setup in the USA, Americans got apprenticeship jobs under the educated English workers and learned.

Your observation about England being white-collar, classist and academic culture may be true to a general extent, but they were the first industrialized nation and then spread that industrialization knowledge through firms, trade, and related institutions. England did not rely on a classist ivory tower culture to operate their industrial sector nor to spread that knowledge.