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 Organisation 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.Lack of opportunity
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.
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 than in the rest of the industrialised world.
As the cars ran off the production lines in Detroit, the graduates were leaving the universities to become part of an expanding middle class.
Overtaken
But the US university system is no longer the only skyscraper on the block. It's been overtaken by rivals in Asia and Europe.
But the US university system is no longer the only skyscraper on the block. It's been overtaken by rivals in Asia and Europe.
Today's young Americans have a below-average chance of becoming a graduate, compared with other industrialised 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.
So what's gone wrong?
The spiralling 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.
Middle-class squeeze
A US Senate committee examined this sense of imperilled 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.
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