I spent 20 years working across two companies in the education sector, and they were both Level 5 UX Maturity companies - but maybe not for the reasons you think.

As university-owned businesses, they were in the business of selling very high quality products based on expert research. Data was prized, including data about customers.

Every person in every role at either of those companies was a master of their craft, including a number of world-class experts. Domain knowledge and formal training was prized, and you'd be closely supervised for a year or two before you were allowed to do anything on your own.

After that, within reason, you had a lot of freedom and autonomy. After getting stakeholder approval for my project plan, I was mostly left alone, but to get that coveted reputation for excellence, the only way to do that was to involve stakeholders at every stage. I went from being told what to do to showing people a draft and asking them to comment.

Whenever anyone disappears and delivers a final draft without showing stakeholders early and often in the process, I wince: it's wrong every time.

If I wanted to have credibility making strategic recommendations, I had to learn about strategy (via dozens of Coursera courses and quite a few books). After that, I'd be invited to meetings and asked to give recommendations.

So, the point is, freedom and autonomy is powerful and necessary, but it comes with responsibility and prerequisites: you first have to have the knowledge, skills and experience to know how to do it well.

In the academic world, that is generally understood, but in the tech world, not so much. There is autonomy and freedom, but that industry-wide lack of formal training results in poor outputs and failed OKRs.