In the 19th century, Germany had a three-class voting system and also a three-class school system. While we switched our voting system, we kept our three-class school system.
In the US you have the idea of the American dream where in principle anyone can reach the upper class (even when the Americans hate to use the term upper class). If you believe that 12 years of schooling are a requirement for reaching upper class and you want to get everyone to upper class it makes sense to give everyone 12 years of schooling.
In the US class has a lot to do with race. The German class system is built in a way that assumes that important class differences are not about race as it assumes most of the citizens are Germans. In the US middle class often means something like not being Black but there’s the pretense that it doesn’t.
Americans who want to overcome racism, then do things like letting universities have a quota for accepting a certain number of Black people to give them access to the middle class. From a German perspective, it’s very unclear why a plumber who’s middle class should have a college degree. It does make sense if you actually want a plumber who isn’t Black when you can filter for that by requiring a college degree.
If you are in Washington and don’t want a Black person to look after your kids but don’t want to admit that you don’t want a Black person to look after your kids, requiring a college degree for that work makes a lot of sense.
It’s worth saying that these days German culture isn’t very strong and we switch a lot to the Anglo-Saxon way of doing things.
In the 19th century, Germany had a three-class voting system and also a three-class school system. While we switched our voting system, we kept our three-class school system.
In the US you have the idea of the American dream where in principle anyone can reach the upper class (even when the Americans hate to use the term upper class). If you believe that 12 years of schooling are a requirement for reaching upper class and you want to get everyone to upper class it makes sense to give everyone 12 years of schooling.
In the US class has a lot to do with race. The German class system is built in a way that assumes that important class differences are not about race as it assumes most of the citizens are Germans. In the US middle class often means something like not being Black but there’s the pretense that it doesn’t.
Americans who want to overcome racism, then do things like letting universities have a quota for accepting a certain number of Black people to give them access to the middle class. From a German perspective, it’s very unclear why a plumber who’s middle class should have a college degree. It does make sense if you actually want a plumber who isn’t Black when you can filter for that by requiring a college degree.
If you are in Washington and don’t want a Black person to look after your kids but don’t want to admit that you don’t want a Black person to look after your kids, requiring a college degree for that work makes a lot of sense.
It’s worth saying that these days German culture isn’t very strong and we switch a lot to the Anglo-Saxon way of doing things.