But the most likely life experiences to do that are ones that put a person in touch with new ideas and new situations. Universities are much better positioned to generate such experiences than, say, most jobs. To some degree, those that have attempted to be at least nominally more diverse (economically/racially/...) are also the sorts of places where students are more likely to meet other people who are not like them in some important ways, and this has always been the sort of experience that preferentially tilts most people towards liberal/progressive ideas.

They do change to some degree, but I believe that age and wealth are not nearly as strong of factors as popular culture might have one think.

The biggest change happens if your mental horizon widens.

One of the reasons white collar is desirable is the physical toll that work over a lifetime can take on a persons body. So, in one sense, it could be perceived as a better deal. Whether it actually is or not is another thing.

Chinese industry is not known for caring overly much about the long term effects on the bodies of their workers. They have more.

And yes, I find it scary to think of what the world is competing with in China. It is hard to compete with their brutal workforce ethics (or lack thereof) and as they seem to be getting well on top of technology too the future is theirs it seems.

"White collar" labor, in a service / knowledge economy doesn't mean "not making real things". Most (?) people on this board do something software or science or product related. Software is real, even if it's intangible. Research is real, even if it's inscrutable. Heck, Design is real, even if it's ineffable.

(Yes, yes, there's vapor-ware, and useless products, and certainly "fake jobs". Those existed in the '40s, too, and in any other time period or economy you care to look at.)

In my view, the problem is that white collar workers stopped thinking of themselves as Workers. Any of us who rely on a company for a paycheck (and, perniciously, in the US for health insurance) aren't Capital, even if we make high salaries. Maybe we're aspiring to join that class - we'll hit the startup lottery, or FIRE, or our IRA portfolio will go up forever - but we ain't yet. (That's fine, by the way: I'm using Marxist terms, but I'm not a Marxist. Pursuing financial independence, and the real - even if remote - possibility of attaining it is what's made the US such a dynamic economy.)

However, allowing our aspirations for wealth, or the relative comfort of white-collar jobs, to lead us to identify with the political goals of Capital - or worse, to adopt an elitist attitude towards people who work in what you call the "real economy" - is what's got the US into the mess we're currently in. That's the "genius" you identify in the present system, and the origin of the cruelty within it.

In reality, we're all Working Class (well, 99% of us are - although that proportion is way out of whack on this board, of all places!), and we need to (politically) act like it.

great illusions of our time, like there's not data to back it up?

While I know this, I will say there is a communication issue in which sneering and lecturing is not really an effective way to persuade others.

Work study jobs vary a lot. Some of them are just wiping whiteboards after the lecture ends in the 300 person classrooms or walking around the library taking headcount every 30 mins. Front desk shifts at the dorm were also another easy one; hand over a package every now and then just do homework or slack off otherwise. Other ones probably work you like a dog and it isn't clear to be fair what the best ones might be as far as working in homework at the same time unless you get an upperclassman to tell you.