Some amusing fluff in here:
Americans don’t need elite tastes to join the upper class - New York Post
https://apple.news/AGsupfG49TP65PzKam_QrsA
Not too surprised considering it’s the NY Post which peddles sensationalist stories to inflame their mostly conservative/right-leaning readers for decades.
Also, having one’s class be determined on more than one’s net worth wouldn’t be considered anything new or remarkable in other parts of the world.
A cursory examination of class conscious Britain in the 18th, 19th, and early-mid-20th century Britain would be a good case in point. And it wasn’t always based on one’s educational attainment, either.
For instance, a poor penniless aristocrat with only a HS level education and possibly an alum of RMA Sandhurst* who served in a posh regiment such as the Household Cavalry would be considered of a higher social class and regarded as “superior” to a self-made millionaire/billionaire who worked him/herself up from the lower classes or a commoner university graduate/academic(They’d be regarded as “insufferably middle class”).
Incidentally, up until the early 20th century, British aristocratic families…especially before the arrival of the university educated consort to Queen Victoria Prince Albert regarded universities as institutions for the middle class and “dens of iniquity” and were proud to prefer sending their scions/children on “The Grand Tour” or military academies(more equivalent to vocational schools than universities) instead. In the greater scheme of things, one’s family aristocratic/gentry pedigree and to a lesser extent…one’s social background and hobbies mattered far more than one’s educational attainment and/or large amount of wealth alone.
- British military academies...especially the older RMA Sandhurst(Army) or BNRC Dartmouth(Navy) aren't authorized and were never intended to act as university-level institutions unlike France's St. Cyr or the American service academies like West Point.
Even the RAF’s RAFC Cranwell when it did offer graduation degrees after a 3 year course was regarded much more akin to a British advanced vocational school(British Polytechnic) as shown by the British higher ed accreditation board refusing to grant them accreditation as a university and when they found in the 1960’s that most of the entering Cranwell cadets tended to be students whose O-Level/A-Level results were such they’d have been precluded from being accepted to any bona-fide university.
The last was a major factor in RAFC Cranwell changing its program to the present program of 24 weeks and accepting mostly college graduates as cadets with a few non-graduates who could later attend university at their discretion after commissioning.
VERY provincial article. The rest of the country and world are not defined by the New York City experience. Seems to be a very superficial and incorrect view of what being upper class means. I prefer being an educational elitist- and that does NOT include most private east coast schools as being worthy of attending. I feel sorry for those who are stuck with the confines of supposed upper class life of NYC.