to the middle class, higher education from a good institution provides skills that ought to prove useful in the future; to the working class, proof of higher ed

to the middle class, higher education from a good institution provides skills that ought to prove useful in the future; to the working class, proof of higher education from a good institution is a gate which demonstrates how much free cash flow one's parents had in the past? (I might assign the labels differently though: working class is future oriented [live in expectation of what you have coming]; upper class is past oriented [live on what you already have]; middle class is present oriented [performative in the now]. The first two are economic; the last social. bien-pensant/What would Mrs. Grundy think?)