I mostly agree with your sentiment here Marley, this as I am busily credentialing myself with certifications that enhance and mark my skills, discipline, and knowledge amassed for a prospective employer’s consideration and for my own entrepreneurial pursuits.
Although we diverge here, where my thirst for education can not be quenched and its utility in untainted form is a rational measure of competence in our scientific world within areas of expertise warranted — think physician, engineer, scientist, welder, cement mixer, tailor, statistician, actuarian, theologian, etc. — we should disabuse ourselves that success achieved or attained through the rigors of education, thirst for knowledge, and the attainment of expertise is zero sum and therefore cannot be a guarantee for personal success.
Those who conspire to violate that guarantee should be held to account.
Success is measured in a variety of ways — becoming rich or wealthy is just a highly sensationalized phenomena that is a relatively rare result to achieve. In terms of the attainment of vast wealth, that would be a cultural overdetermination due to a number of ancillary causes that are overlooked— moment of demand, cognitive bias, being at the right place at the right time, personality, cultural fit, racial etiquette, and classism, etc. — that so happen to have culminated or inveigled that particular successful result.
As I stated in response to another medium reader’s comment (Michelle Jones), ironically, we have been taken in and mislead into believing the hype that the institutions of college — its admissions and Ivy Leaguers present to us in the form of higher education. Meritocratically prizing it in such a hierarchical, classist and racialized way, and in its commodified pursuit for betterment, I can understand the disillusionment garnered.
Unfortunately, the vanity and insanity with this socially constructed form of inequality has become this plausible alternative that we are made to essentially seek as refuge from impending destitution, when in fact it is just another form of impoverishment — both tangible and psychological — when we consider the ethical and moral implications.
My hope is that the uncovering of these scams will revamp these callous institutions and recondition us all.
