Also, I'm not ready to consign the bulk of the country to a life of labor. Instead of, for instance, exploring what makes us human. Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?
200 years ago the privileges of the elite were much more permanent and resilient than they are now. And even if this is false, the university was much more exclusive back then. Meaning it was a much more elite elite.
The great flowering of universities as colleges of liberal arts -- and of scientific research in general -- happened a lot later, generally in the 1870-1970 period.
History is another planet, populated by fascinating aliens.
(And yes, I have a CS degree. Oddly, it didn't teach me anything useful about participation in civic life or how to understand the ethical implications of a proposed course of action.)
History is a lot of planets, populated by diverse aliens.
Finance has something of a stranglehold on society, that is why there isn't more arts and civics. House prices, cost of living these all translate into either work really hard to support yourself and your family (this goes for both males and females, it's rare to see a family have kids where only one parent goes out on a daily basis for a paycheck) or end up on the fringes of society (either living on hand-outs or some way of living hand-to-mouth for as long as you're not generating income).
Now personally I don't mind the hard work, but with all the productivity gains and the number of people that are simply rich you'd expect that the spoils would be more evenly distributed but that very much depends on which part of the planet you are looking at and which demographic for a specific location.
Arts and civics are to some extent a huge luxury, in times long gone by the artists would have patrons, wealthy people directly supporting one or more of their favorite artists by commissioning works. Today such artists still exist but the 'big money' in the arts is in the media (and it has a much shorter shelf life than say a work by Michelangelo, otoh we all agree on that because his works made it to our time and are considered masterpieces, chances are there was plenty of mediocre work done in his time too).
I highly doubt the majority of the population is interested in answering questions such as 'what makes us human', and I think that one of the bigger problems with blue collar jobs disappearing (and possibly being replaced by basic income or other forms of hand-outs) is that there is satisfaction in work, the knowledge that you don't depend on others for your bread and butter and the idea that you're a productive member of society. For me at least there is great value in that and I feel better because of it, much better than if I would receive some kind of stipend just because I exist. Probably that's because of how I was raised and maybe a generation that was not raised with that particular work ethic would have a smaller problem (or none at all) with receiving funds even though nothing of value was produced.
Workhouses and prisons are now country wide, we call them 'the third world', and if and when we reach income parity I suspect production will shift back to 'local' because of reduced shipping costs.
And students aren't interested in 'what makes us human'? I know quite a few students, and its a very large part of their makeup. They are young and relatively ignorant and college can be a wonderland of discovery.
Or it can be training, a boring trudge from High School to a job.
We, you and I probably not. But plenty of others do work extremely hard. Quite probably not as hard as the people that farmed the land or worked in cotton mills 200 years ago, but still, pretty hard.
The danger is to see this stuff through a personal lens, the world is a very large place and life has gotten a lot more complicated requiring ever higher levels of education to partake in the spoils.
It's like the Douglas Adams bit, 'Many people were rich, and nobody was really poor, at least, nobody worth speaking of' or something to that extent.
There is poverty, it's real, and quite a few people work hard to extremely hard to escape it and yet they can't seem to achieve 'escape velocity'. And not exactly everybody goes to college either.