To paraphrase a t-shirt aphorism, "I didn't go to college; I joined the Navy and got drunk on taxpayer money instead."

You might also like this:

https://joebageant.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/a-feral-dog-howls-in-harvard-yard-by-joe-bageant/

It's not just the money and class laundering, it's the support of Empire performed by sycophants of power and politics that forms a foundation of perpetual colonialism under a guise of meritocracy.

The poor rural towns stay that way, partly because the rich urban systems extract the best and brightest to support the pyramid scheme, leaving the rest to be crushed by 'efficiency' of scale.