Some professional educations confer nigh-automatic professional class (Fussell's "upper middle") status, and tend to include socialization into that class as pa

Some professional educations confer nigh-automatic professional class (Fussell's "upper middle") status, and tend to include socialization into that class as part of the package. Doctors, lawyers, certain fields in business. They may be rich, they may not, but every parent says "oh, your new SO's a lawyer! Better hang on to that one, kid!" Programmers, engineers, and the like don't get that automatically, without more context—money, notable employer and notable position at that employer, and even then maybe not quite placed at the same social rank as a doctor/lawyer without even more context, e.g. school, other non-tech accomplishments (languages and arts especially), and so on. Going to any Ivy, top public, or famous European (especially British) school gets you closer (see the part above in paragraph one about socialization into the upper-middle). [EDIT] I should add that you also don't gain Academic cred that puts you on a kind of adjacent track on the whole class system, with full professorships granting similar social standing to doctors/lawyers and the like. Unless you are in academia, and don't bail on it for private industry too early.