I'm not really sure what you are trying to get at in this question but I think the days of people putting all their faith in just "knowledge" are pretty much at an end. Used to be thought OK send your kids to college and that will make them better people and pretty much everyone bought in to that. That WAS the "status quo". Now turns out so often all kids do in college is drink to excess and absorb very vague Marxist doctrine about the "masses". Thoughtful parents now encourage their children to work and apprentice themselves or go into the national service etc. Which is why so many of our colleges have bent over backward trying to attract foreign students.
Not sure what a "low" status quo is but fact is that people do like what they are comfortable with and that becomes the "status quo" for them. Whether you may regard it as "low" or "high" or whatever. People resent being told what to do and how to think. Or, worse, coerced into doing and thinking.
