During the 1920s, there were alternatives to a university degree. There were jobs to be had and small businesses to start. That was no longer true during the 1930s. The alternative was to either open the institutions of the elite to the poor or create a permanent underclass. World War II and the GI Bill solved the dilemma. That dilemma is back. Either the rapidly declining white working class will gain access to the credentials needed to rise, or a permanent underclass will be created. The danger in the 1930s of such a class was real, as it is now.
