It's just not true that there are only two types of jobs in a modern economy - those that require a college education and those that are purely muscle jobs.

I didn't mean to imply that. What I'm trying to say -evidently poorly- is that in our increasingly technical world, it is increasingly important to have technical education. Because the jobs that don't require it are disappearing from our shores. And some of the technical jobs, too, since you can now employ an Indian engineer to design your microchip from Mumbai. We have few muscle jobs, we have tools that make rooms full of paper-pushers redundant...what's left? Engineers, doctors, lawyers, skilled trades (carpenters, plumbers), construction, and service industry. Which creates a wealth disparity, which has its own problems (a lot of service industry is minimum wage, or maybe 2x minimum). This isn't 1980. In 1980 a computer had a green screen, and would run VisiCalc and a word processor. Today it replaces an entire room full of clerical workers with just one person with an Intel i7 core.

Only people who have the socio-cultural background and access to financial resources that allow getting a college degree are able to get that "more."

I think I said in my original post that we need to make education more affordable and accessible. Hard to deal with the cultural aspect, but we certainly can deal with the socio-economic part. And we should. I've said before, free education (state university) up to a BS/BA for anyone who can pass an entrance exam. No more burdensome student loans. It was a boon for the US economy when we did that K-12. I predict it will be another boon if we do that for college.**

**We already have some experience with this through the GI bill. Lots of folks able to go to college, and our economy boomed.