The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility

We live in a world with too many graduates fighting for too few jobs; where Deliveroo and FedEx drivers have advanced degrees.

The Educated Underclass offers a much-needed look at this societal restructuring from the perspective of students. Gary Roth examines the way that universities often reproduce traditional class hierarchies, the mechanisms that enable upward and downward social mobility, and how the ‘overproduction of intelligence’ hinders students, calling for a realignment of how social classes function today.

The dream of social mobility is dying. Where previous generations where expected to surpass their parents’ level of economic success, prospects for today’s graduates are increasingly bleak.