Graduate school only exacerbates this problem. Meanwhile. The competition for jobs after of college is quite fierce, and it has been suggested that spending the four or five years one would spend in college spent working, making contacts, and getting promoted might actually be of better use to many. Similarly, de Tocqueville noted that most people simply cannot achieve the amount of wealth that the Americans seemed to think their freedom entitled them to. Not only were there various obstacles that many couldn't or wouldn't overcome, but the simple fact of limited resources means that the majority of people mathematically could not become as wealthy as they wished. There are limited jobs with security and a decent pay rate today, but high school students are told that college --...

I do not plan on dropping out of school -- I have bought not what I have been told to some degree -- but I do realize that there is no guarantee or even necessarily n advantage in holding a college degree when so man others have them as well. The even playing field that American society supposedly established means not that everyone has the same chance to succeed, but that everyone has the same chance to achieve mediocrity. This was still a step forward from Europe at the time, but it has a much different resonance for me today. I have adjusted my expectations both from what I will get out of life, and how hard I will have to work to get it.