Education cannot change the fundamental inequalities in American society, inequalities only slightly arrested during the fat years of the Clinton presidency. The fact that the average high school drop out's income fell 20 percent in the '80s cannot be solved by more education for a lucky few. The generation ahead of today's college students is already experiencing a stagnant standard of living, even with college degrees. By that, she means that the relative affluence that is supposed to go with a college education does not necessarily exist now. Education is not a panacea.
Degrees confer relative status.
To equate equality with upward mobility is to write off the majority of the population. Not everyone can be an executive. The problem with programs like affirmative action in education is not the few minority students who are given the chance to get ahead and are selectively rescued, it's the many who are left increasingly further behind. And there's nothing at all to give poor whites a hand up. But higher education is not class-neutral.