Thus as education levels and technological advances have increased since 1970, the profits generated from these activities have not been shared with the average worker. The problem then is not a question of education or skills or even technology, the issue is how profits are distributed.
In an act of great ideological deception, business leaders and politicians have been able to turn our attention to higher education as the solution to wage stabnation because they do not want us to look at some of the real causes, like profit hording, de-unionization, financial speculation, executive pay, regressive taxation, and outsourcing. Cassidy points out that in place of dealing with these real economic issues, we are told that America has a fair meritocracy, and the key to economic advancement for individuals and the country as a whole is to produce more people with college degrees.
The myth of the meritocracy is an effective ideological tool because it tells us that if someone does not have a good job, it is their own fault. After all, we have a fair system of equal opportunity, which provides everyone the chance for social mobility. The reality of the situation is that our economic system is enhancing inequality and higher education is making things worse. Looking at the relation between family income and college attainment since 1970, we see that people in the top quartile income bracket who enter college have increased their degree attainment from 55% to 99%, while people from the bottom bracket have moved from 22% to 21% during the same forty-three-year period: