Aren't people going further in education now than ever before?

Going further in schooling maybe, but getting degrees nowadays is usually not primarily for personal enlightenment.

Nor does it usually make people any more intelligent, in fact there may be an inverse correlation...

Bachelors degrees have mostly been a signal for a long time. The problem is that we have credential inflation, so now you need a masters or phd to send that same signal to employers. As a result, you have fewer people going to college, but a greater percentage of people who go to college are getting advanced degrees.