Ha! That's what I get for trying to write on my phone; I have a bad habit of omitting words when I do that. First, I would like to say that, in my experience,

Ha! That's what I get for trying to write on my phone; I have a bad habit of omitting words when I do that. First, I would like to say that, in my experience, academics aren't really any smarter than basically anyone with a desk job. It's not terribly hard to become an adjunct professor; depending on the state and/or school, you can become an adjunct with just a bachelors degree (though most require masters degrees or higher), and there are plenty of very dumb people who manage to get their BS or BA. Second, the point I was trying to make was that I don't think that the parent that I was responding to was correct about this being an "abandonment of the American Dream". I think it should be encouraged to lower the educational bar for a lot of jobs.