Jan 16, 2023
"Get woke, go broke." It's a phrase people coined to describe the failure of Hollywood's recent politics-drenched efforts at blockbuster films, from which viewers stayed away in droves. But now it applies to another field: higher education. College and graduate degrees were comparatively rare before about 1970. People could be quite successful without them, and there was little stigma attached to their absence. That changed as the baby boomers and the GI Bill hit colleges. By the 1970s, college became an essential ticket to entry in the managerial and professional classes (and even to military promotions). Where higher ed had once been a luxury, it became a necessity to membership in the middle, and especially the upper-middle, class. Parents struggled to live in districts with "top" public schools so they could get their kids into good colleges. Once admitted, the students often borrowed huge sums (most of which went into the colleges' pockets) to atte