An integral part of the American Dream is under threat - as "downward mobility" haunts the education system in the United States.
The idea of going to college - and the expectation that the next generation will be better educated and more prosperous than its predecessor - has been hardwired into the ambitions of the middle classes in the United States.
But there are deep-seated worries about whether this upward mobility is going into reverse.
Andreas Schleicher, special adviser on education at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), says the US is now the only major economy in the world where the younger generation is not going to be better educated than the older.
"It's something of great significance because much of today's economic power of the United States rests on a very high degree of adult skills - and that is now at risk," says Mr Schleicher.
"These skills are the engine of the US economy and the engine is stuttering," says Mr Schleicher, one of the world's most influential experts on international education comparisons.
The annual OECD education statistics show that only about one in five young adults in the US reaches a higher level of education than their parents - among the lowest rates of upward mobility in the developed world.
Ohio steelworks A steelworker in Ohio in 1950 drives away his new Dodge, paid for with a $320 monthly wage. The steelworks have shut and the town is now in the "rust belt"
For a country whose self-image is based on optimism and opportunity, the US is now a country where someone with poorly-educated parents is less likely to reach university than in almost any other industrial country.
It's the opposite of a Hollywood ending.
And about one in five young adults in the US are now defined in educational terms as "downwardly mobile" - such as children who have graduate parents but who don't reach university level themselves.
When the global story of higher education is so much about rapid expansion and the race to increase graduates, it's almost counter-intuitive to find a powerhouse such as the United States on the brink of going backwards.
It's easy to overlook the dominance of US higher education in the post-war era - or how closely this was linked to its role as an economic, scientific and military superpower.
The US had the first great mass participation university system. The GI Bill, which provided subsidies for a generation of World War II veterans, supported three times as many people as are currently in the entire UK university sector.
An American born in the 1950s was about twice as likely to become a graduate as someone born in the rest of the industrialized world.
As the cars ran off the production lines in Detroit, rising numbers of graduates were leaving universities to become part of an expanding middle class.
But the US university system is no longer the only skyscraper on the block. It's been overtaken by rivals in Asia and Europe.
Barack Obama President Obama has promised that by 2020 the US will regain its position as the global leader in the proportion of young people becoming graduates
Today's young Americans have a below-average chance of becoming a graduate, compared with other industrialized economies.
The US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in a speech a few weeks ago, asked how the US had in "the space of a generation" tumbled from first place to 14th in graduation rates.
The spiraling cost of higher education in the United States is often cited as a barrier - and the collective student debt has exceeded a trillion dollars.
But Andreas Schleicher argues that a deeper problem is rooted in the inequalities of the school system.
He says that the level of social segregation and the excessive link between home background and success in school is "cutting off the supply" between secondary school and university.
The meritocratic, migrant energy in US culture is no longer operating in the school system.
"If you lose the confidence in the idea that effort and investment in education can change life chances, it's a really serious issue," says Mr Schleicher.
A US Senate committee examined this sense of imperiled optimism, in a hearing called Helping More Young People Achieve the American Dream.
The economist Miles Corak was among the expert witnesses - and he says the US education system reflects a wider picture of the "hollowing out" of the middle class.
"What you're seeing is the inequality of the labor market being echoed in education."
Prof Corak describes a polarizing jobs market, with the very rich and very poor diverging - and a collapse in jobs in the middle ground, such as clerical or manufacturing jobs.
For such families, sending their children to college had once been a "defining metaphor for the country".
But it seems that the education system is no longer holding the door open to the brightest and the best, regardless of background.
The Philadelphia-based Pew research group compared the outcomes of young people in 10 western countries, in a project called Does America Promote Mobility as Well as Other Countries?
It found the US had the strongest link between family wealth and educational success - and the lowest mobility. Advantage and disadvantage were being further amplified in education.
Research manager Diana Elliott says in the US "income has a pervasive hold on mobility".
Another study by Pew, against the backdrop of recession, examined the phenomenon of downward mobility and found that a third of adults classified as middle class would slip out of that status during their adult life.
Harvard and Yale football While the US has slipped down in graduate numbers, individual universities remain at the top of international university league tables
It reflected a modern sense of insecurity, where families could no longer assume their children would be as prosperous. In fact, about a quarter of children born into the middle class were expected to slip downwards.
None of this matches the image of the US as a place for fresh starts and self-made millionaires. Modern American history almost assumes an upward incline.
But evidence of this downward drift has been gathering in recent years. A study by the University of California, Berkeley, showed that school leavers in California in 1970 were more likely to stay on to higher education than their counterparts in 2000.
In terms of international education, that's like finding out that athletes were running faster 40 years ago.
Such current difficulties should not be mistaken for any kind of end-of-empire zeitgeist, says Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.
Instead he says it's a more practical question of money. The rising cost of higher education is a deterrent. And there is a wider question of finance for higher education at state level.
He also says there is another "dirty little secret" of US higher education - that too many people who enrol at university fail to graduate - which pushes down the graduation rate in international comparisons.
Andreas Schleicher also says there are reasons for optimism. Almost more than any other country, he says the US has the financial resources, the capacity and the flexibility to change course quickly and to catch up.
There are already plans to recover lost ground. President Barack Obama has been re-elected with a promise that the US will regain its global first place in graduation rates by 2020.
And as part of this drive, the American Association of Community Colleges, in a project called Reclaiming the American Dream, has an ambitious plan to create five million more college places.
But it's an aspiration against a gloomy background.
"The American dream has stalled," the association's report says, describing a society where typical family incomes having been falling for more than a decade.
"A child born poor in the United States today is more likely to remain poor than at any time in our history. Many other nations now outperform us in educational attainment and economic mobility, and the American middle class shrinks before our eyes."
It's as if It's A Wonderful Life had been remade - without the happy ending.
Thanks for your comments. Here is a small sample of the large numbers of emails submitted.
For the US in the 1950s now read China in the 2010s. There are something like 15 times the number of professional engineers and scientists soon to graduate in China compared to the US - and something like 15 times the number of professional engineers and scientists in the US soon to graduate compared to the UK. Martin, Southampton, UK
Problems in the public school system are leading to this. Teaching resources sharply declined within the last decade, qualitatively and quantitatively. Most of the teachers could not catch up with new age and digital revolution. Not only educationally, but also emotionally they are way behind the technological requirements: simply can't keep up. Zeki, Azmir, Turkey
This is far more a symptom of the previous generation being the best educated in the world than of any real collapse in the education system. Upward trends can only continue for a certain period of time, education in the USA has reached that peak and will now plateau. Couple that with more and more young people delaying going to college both in the USA and UK based on costs and you will see this pattern replicated throughout the developing world in the next decades. People will still be educated to high levels, that education will just likely be spread out over a longer period, which might not be a bad thing. Ieuan, Port Talbot
This phenomenon is occurring all around the Western world and is not unique to the US. Where once education was considered a privilege, now it is considered not merely a right, but something to be taken for granted and even resented as an imposition. Western educators approach their school populations as supplicants, begging for their participation and engagement, instead of pointing out the realities and consequences of ignorance. The result of these approaches speak for themselves. Asian nations that slavishly emulate these Western trends will suffer similar educational outcomes. Pam, Sydney, Australia
At the top of the pyramid resources and quality are second to none, in the middle quality much depends on location; the tax base of the school district, at the bottom the system loses kids early. For most (not the brightest), the cost college education is a hill to climb and an undergrad degree alone is insufficient for a middle class career to pay it off. The economics of college vs. non-college is no longer clear. Kevin, Allentown, US
I am a secondary school Math teacher. I have a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a M.S. in Education. I would go on to earn a Ph.D., but it is too expensive. One reason my students don't want to go to college is they don't see any value in it. They read and watch stories of people making millions without ever going to college: athletes, musicians, stars, models, innovators, self-trained programmers. And then there are skilled technicians who don't need college (plumbers, security specialists, hair stylists, etc.). We also hear in the news about companies leaving US soil because they cannot find people to work in their factories - high paying jobs that don't require a college degree. Apparently our young people don't want to go to college, but at the same time they don't want to work in a factory environment either. Another issue with value is that students are well aware of the fact that teachers and other college educated people don't make that much money. A starting teacher in our district (with a family of four) makes approximately $28,000 a year (poverty level). Students look at us and ask 'Why should I go to school to earn a degree to be poor? We are already poor, so what benefit is all that extra work?" I am at the point where I agree with them. Salaries of the middle class have not changed much in 20 years, while the rich are now measured by billions, not millions. There is staggering inequality and students are not blind. Adam, Knoxville, US
Higher education starts at birth. Access to words, ideas, lessons in self-control need to be prioritized in the first five years of life--not in the four years of high school. American policy and funding has consistently focused more on prisons than on preschools. In addition, the education system focuses more on perceived deficits (learning disabilities, etc.) than on perceived potential. Until the beautiful rigor of hard work is valued amongst elementary schools, American post-secondary educational attainment will continue to lag behind. Susan, Woolwich, Maine, US
It's worse than it looks. The US measures education by "years of schooling", but most schools have lowered their standards to allow children to remain at school long after they've stopped learning. The *majority* of "college students" are just endlessly repeating work that is appropriate to much younger children. John, New York, US
I have long felt that the decline of our educational system is just another symptom of the war on the middle class being waged by the wealthy here in the US. If the wealthy paid their share of taxes (and if the spending of those taxes wasn't so heavily influenced by corporate lobbyists), the money would be available to keep education affordable. It astounds me that people who should know better think that the best way to increase their own wealth is to make everyone else poorer. While stealing from the poor (through political and corporate influence) may work in the short-term to increase the wealth of the already-wealthy, the long-term results will be the decline of our entire nation. Michael, Washington DC, US
Many people in the USA are entering 1yr or shorter programs gain a specific skill such as, medical admin., after which they extend their education over time. This limits the amount of student loans needed to gain a modern marketable skill. I went the four year path and what a mistake. I have $38k in student loans and trying to live on $9hr with rent etc. Also as education funding has dried up schools are now more holding cells than educational facilities in many parts of the USA. DK, Maine, US
US education can be outstanding at the graduate level, but is almost dismissive of anybody who does not want to go to university. Teenagers who do not see university as the best option for them get shoehorned into classes they are not interested in, end up going to college for a few courses, and drop out. A more balanced approach that would make industrial and craft apprenticeships an acceptable path would improve graduation rates in secondary and tertiary education. John, Columbus, US
It's an economic issue. Potential students need to see value at the end of the process. If you can go to school and see a probable increase in salary at the end, as a result of the work, then you'll consider it. If you're going to go to school and see both years of debt repayment and limited chances for jobs at the end, you're unlikely to do it. The price of education in most Anglo countries but particularly the US is such that most potential students are priced out of the market. EB, Juba, Sudan
The greater issue is a deficient high school education system in the US. Students taking entry level classes are failing for lack of basic skills including spelling, grammar, and arithmetic, but also logical reasoning. Challenging these students earlier on will prepare them for college education and make them capable of taking on other jobs if they do not want to get a degree. Alastair, Athens, Ohio, US
It's just supply and demand. Manufacturers in this global economy moved to lower labor costs. Even clerical jobs like call centers and even jobs like reading x-rays or architects or lawyers have been off-shored. Anything that doesn't require physical contact with the customer can be off-shored. In my area recently there was an opening for an elementary school teacher. Three hundred people applied for the job. Many with masters degrees. I know a man, college graduate, let go in his 50's who after two years found a job at a large chain store. He said everyone working there were college graduates who could not find work in their field. Working for little more than minimum wage with no health care and large student loans. After a generation of shipping jobs overseas, with the encouragement of the government, what else do you expect? You can't have a country that doesn't make anything and is based only on the service industry. RL, Michigan, US
The real problem here in the U.S. is that our pre-college education system is failing us. Students often can't get into college because they are insufficiently prepared. Teachers at pre-college levels are only concerned about their pay. Read the post from the math teacher in Knoxville. They always sing the same song, We Need More Pay. Yet they refuse to let their pay (and advancement) be influenced by the best possible measure of their job performance -- how well their students are learning, based on standardized testing. They're not doing a good job, and they want more money for doing so. And when they don't get what they want, the go on strike and the students sit at home instead of going to school. They are holding our country's students for ransom and should be ashamed of themselves. Phil, Minneapolis, US