This guy is a typical product of the current education system. To compare the USA to medieval England is beyond absurd. In medieval England the vast majority of the people could nor read or write; then again it seems our current education system wants to return to this period.
You would think that a college professor would know the number of students who are the first in their family to graduate from college is astronomical.
So either the claims by every college that a college degree assures upward mobility or this professor is a twit. They can not both be true. The numbers are too great.
It is to a great degree a matter of defining what is meant. More people have degrees than ever but it certainly appears that they have LESS real education if you consider education, as I do, to mean knowledge of how to make a LIFE as opposed to how to make a LIVING. Some have told me that young people now are actually more mature at a given age than their parents or grandparents. If that is the case how do you explain that I rode to school on buses driven by sixteen and seventeen year old student drivers who did a great job while now we have TWENTY six year olds still on their parents insurance? Many of those student drivers, as well as many of their classmates who didn’t drive the buses became married homeowners with children at or before the age when their grandchildren are receiving their undergraduate degrees and most of those grandchildren with degrees could not pass their grandparents eighth grade final in history, english or literature. They may know some math but when I consider how many use ridiculous expressions such as “3000 percent less” even that seems doubtful. People who call themselves “journalists” make errors in speech and writing of the sort that would have gotten me a severe scolding from my fifth grade teacher. In the area around me I could easily fill a large building with people in their thirties, forties and even fifties who have high school diplomas and some even have college degrees but have never been able to support themselves unassisted and probably never will. This contrasts with my youth when the average adult had about eight years of formal schooling but very few relied on anyone but themselves for anything. We now see people who have degrees taking jobs that the average high school graduate of fifty or sixty years ago would have scorned.
I could go on but I am simply reporting my observations, make what you will of them.