College does not imply middle-class values

While I was tutoring a local community college student in the basement of the University's main library, the boys--and I can't call them anything else--in the next glass-enclosed study room over were playing techno music, occasionally shouting/braying to each other (in between mumbles), and belching loudly and deliberately after guzzling their Cokes.

Chewing-tobacco containers and Burger King bags littered the floor. Barzun would call it "emancipation", and it not only debases the academic enterprise, but also devalues the degree of the more serious students. A college degree, especially from a "we have to take just about everyone" state university, no longer almost necessarily implies middle-class values.

Kids, that's why, right or wrong, college degrees are almost always required to get the "good jobs".