College in general was meant as a way for people to rise up, and for my generation (early millennials) it worked. My first job in software engineering paid way more than my parents combined income.

Society has managed to mess that pipeline up, first through massive student loans, and now through just general unemployment.

But the system worked for a long time.

The Ivy leagues are something different. Society can only have so many "elites", or else they stop being elite and just start being irritating rich people. There needs to be a path for new blood to enter the elites, so feeder lanes exist.

This all worked rather well for at least half the 20th century, but recently the elites have gone a bit too far into the "eat the poor" territory, and society is starting to crumble around the edges.

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corimaith 5 days ago | parent [-]

>College in general was meant as a way for people to rise up

No, college started out as academic institutions of learning, not instruments of social mobility. It was never intended as a job training program, rather a place of academics to work together on a topic, and was heavily restricted to the aristocrats and elites from the start.

Alot of the problems here is stemming precisely from trying to use higher education for a purpose it was not originally designed to do.

	▲	mathiaspoint 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. University needs to be university. It's never been good at being other things. People have completely forgotten why it mattered on resumes to begin with. Association with a university signaled an appreciation for philosophy, now it signals tolerance for administrative abuse.