Reynold's Law.

Subsidize middle-class status markers and you don't get more of the middle-class, you get fewer people with the virtues that make the middle class possible.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Dwindling Power Of A College Degree.“Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability. To get a good job, you have to have some special skill — charm, by the way, counts — that employers value. But there’s also a pretty good chance that by some point in the next few years, your boss will find that some new technology or some worker overseas can replace you.”
Of course, one reason why a bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability is that a bachelor’s degree has gotten much easier to get, as part of a conscious strategy of giving everyone the markers of intelligence and capability. Remember Reynolds’ Law:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.