I don't think the phenomenon is unique to creationism. If people have no direct experience of an area of human endeavor, they tend to assume that mastering it can't really be that big a deal. Some years ago I saw the results of a survey of fans of professional sports, and how well they could play the sport. I don't remember the exact figures, but a ridiculously large fraction of the people in the stands thought that, with a little training, they could do as well as the guys on the field. And many people have little or no direct experience with science or scientists.
I would hope that higher education would expand people's awareness of what they don't know, but I'm not sure that it always does; some people seem to assume that because they're educated in one field, they're experts in all. Philosophy seems to bring out the worst in people in this regard: I've seen more than one highly educated person who knew next to nothing about philosophy trying to lecture a professional philosopher on the subject.
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