[chasef]

Yeah I agree. It is more difficult to leave poverty if you are born into it, but the choice of the word "myth" was a poor one. I also would have liked to hear more about her degrees. What were they in? Why were they not useful in today's current world? I think this could have gave us much greater insight. Also, the making fun of healthy foods turned me off a little because I always choose healthier options if they are available. "Food" in America is often not really food, so if you can afford better food I wouldn't blame you for it. But it did help visualize the character in her story. Her writing was good. Just would have liked to get more answers to said questions so we can figure out more about how we can fix education to make it not such a struggle for people to move upwardly.

[pjlegato]

She doesn't mention what her degrees are in, which I'm quite sure is deliberate: she doesn't want a bunch of people writing to say, "well, of course you are picking kale, you studied {creative writing | English literature | etc.}"

Her proposition is that having any degree entitles one to a middle class lifestyle.

This is an archaic notion based on the economic situation in the US before the 1960s, before the government began subsidizing mass higher education. Bachelor's degrees were expensive and rare then, so that actually worked.

Now, we have millions of people with non-marketable bachelor's degrees picking kale for a living, because nobody told them that the economic situation has shifted radically since then and bachelor's degrees don't guarantee you a nice job anymore.