Where is it written that person who isn’t learning full-time doesn’t value Torah learning? There are plenty of working people who sacrifice to be kovea ittim. How many kollel yungermen would get up at five in the morning so they can go to a shiur? Give up time to relax after work to learn with a chavrusa?
How many people in the alter heim were able to sit and learn full time? Are you telling me that none of them valued the Torah? If that were so, we wouldn’t be here (in the frume velt) today. We’d be assimilated. Period.
How many of these full-time learners would be able to conquer the nisyonos that working men have, much less what our forebears suffered?