In 2019, the Varsity Blues scandal erupted, revealing a web of petty corruption that was both darkly ironic and, for all its isolated nature, revealing of American parenthood. Wealthy parents, including celebrities and business leaders, had bribed college officials and falsified athletic credentials to get children into their colleges of choice. This scandal had multiple layers of absurdity. Paying money to get one’s kids into college is not illegal; had the parents donated multiple millions to the colleges directly, rather than merely several hundred thousand through bribes, their children would have been warmly welcomed. Colleges are nominally educational institutions, but the most effective way to get colleges to admit the kids was to pass them off as athletic superstars.

But most striking of all is the fact that the best way these wealthy parents could think of to advance their children was to pay just under a million dollars apiece for the privilege of paying tuition at the likes of USC. Rather than illustrating the power of shadowy webs of money and privilege, this scandal illuminated the impotence of money, the inability of these products of privilege to secure their children’s future through any means other than propitiating middle-tier educational institutions.

The means of class reproduction

Like giant pandas, the PMC cannot reproduce without assistance. They cannot transfer assets, knowledge, and networks to their children; their path to reproducing their class status is mediated through an increasingly expensive and competitive educational gauntlet.

The institutions that gatekeep professional success are well aware of this dependency and have adapted accordingly. Schools and training programs have grown more costly and selective, exploiting the PMC’s lack of alternatives. Elite private schools charge astronomical tuitions, not just for the quality of education but for the intangible promise of keeping children on the right track. Colleges have cultivated a culture of admissions anxiety, pushing parents to invest in test prep, extracurricular achievements, and strategic philanthropy. Meanwhile, professional training has become more prolonged and arduous: law firm associates work longer hours than their predecessors, medical residencies stretch further into adulthood, and finance careers demand grueling apprenticeships before any real upward mobility. Lengthened training is nothing but a wage cut by other means, with the gains going to incumbent institutions – teaching hospitals, biglaw partners, tenured academics.

There is an absurdity to the results – parents queueing up for private kindergartens so their children may fingerpaint in prestigious company, high school kids earnestly talking up the fashionable nonprofit they founded with parental funding, eight year olds diligently practicing dressage so that they may study at the best institutions. But zoom out and the picture is a grim one. The professional-managerial class has no reliable means of reproducing itself without being taxed by these institutions, and however high the toll, they must pay. Unlike traditional elites, who could hand down tangible assets or direct pathways to success, the PMC relies on a tenuous bargain with the educational and professional gatekeepers who hold their children’s futures hostage. This is not merely a story of cost disease or competitive meritocracy – it is a structural flaw in the PMC’s ability to sustain itself across generations. Their dependence on external institutions means that any surplus they earn through their high-paying jobs is gradually siphoned off by the very systems they rely on to maintain their class position.

The result is a class that, despite its high incomes and social prestige, is fundamentally unsustainable. Without the ability to directly pass down their status, and with institutions continuously raising the price of admission, the professional-managerial class finds itself locked in a cycle where each generation must start from scratch – until, inevitably, the system consumes more than the class can produce.1

One might argue that this system is a positive development – that wealth should not buy privilege and that a meritocracy ensures the most capable rise to the top. But the current arrangement does not reflect a functional meritocracy. A true meritocracy, like a wartime military or a rapidly expanding industry, seeks to identify and deploy talent quickly and efficiently. Our current system does the opposite – it draws out the process, layering on more obstacles and costs, not to identify talent but to extract wealth while certifying it. The gatekeeping institutions have no incentive to streamline the path to success; their interest lies in extending it, ensuring that both parents and children continue to pay into the system for as long as possible. Rather than elevate talented but less privileged students, it subjects them to the same protracted, expensive climb.

Don’t end the generation with nothing

What, then, can be done? There are two potential responses. The first is to recognize that the most extractive forms of this parasitism occur in well-established, prestigious professions. Those who entered corporate law, hedge funds, or tech decades ago often complain that the industry isn’t what it was in the old days – before these fields became enshrined as “safe” paths to affluence. The safest-seeming ladders become the most overcrowded, and the longer a profession has been viewed as prestigious, the more entrenched and extractive its gatekeepers become. Therefore, the path to true professional success may lie not in competing harder for the increasingly unappealing rewards of established paths, but in seeking out the undervalued, unglamorous fields where merit still holds sway – the places not yet bled dry by institutional parasitism.

The second, more radical approach is to rethink what success looks like altogether. The culture has viewed professional careers – whether in law, medicine, finance, academia, or industry – as the pinnacle of sober aspiration: secure, prestigious, and rich in social capital. These are the ones with TV shows about their professional lives, the ones about whom teachers say “if you study really hard, one day you might become…” But the PMC is, at its core, merely well-paid labor, and is structurally unable to break free from its institutional dependence. Real, enduring success, then, comes from moving beyond labor into ownership of capital3. The next step up the ladder isn’t more credentials or higher salaries, it’s not even a brokerage account bulging with passive index funds. It’s the accumulation and stewardship of owned, actively managed capital and skills within families and communities. It means building businesses, investing in talent, and creating networks – forms of wealth that children can learn to manage directly, without the blessing of gatekeeping institutions4.

Ultimately, the professional-managerial class must confront an uncomfortable truth: lacking capital of their own, they are at the mercy of the very institutions they rely on to maintain their status. The choice is stark – continue feeding a system that consumes, generation after generation, everything they produce, or look beyond it and start building something of their own. There is nothing wrong with being a professional, but it is not the end of the road. The future does not belong to the professionals, but to the children of those who see it as a stop on the way to something greater – true capital, true autonomy, and the ability to pass on value and skills to future generations.