Mrs May just went on about meritocracy.
This means she WANTS people to achieve and if achievement means university this is something to be encouraged not shot down as something that is somehow dirty.
The difference is she wants kids of people with less opportunities to also go to university.
She will first have to deal with the attitudes that somehow its a betrayal of your class or upbringing to do that. Something that is part of the problem to do with certain groups of kids not achieving. If the environment you grow up in, is so dismissive and disparaging of university education do you think this encourages people to break out of that social expectation or to sell themselves short too?
In theory she wants ALL parents to aspire to their kids doing Erasmus or studying abroad to further themselves. I'm not sure I see her demonstrating this when Brexit threatens this for all - not just the middle classes who currently get this opportunity disproportionately.
I am from the north and am middle class. Sometimes it feels like being trapped by two worlds; the southerner who looks down on the north as some kind of backward area (I really have come across individuals who refuse to visit friends in the north) and by working class people who think you are a snob before you even utter a sentence because they know your postcode. Its always frustrated me and never made me feel completely comfortable within my own country, if you don't 'belong'. The judgement is there and never goes away in the eyes of some. You are not one of 'their own'.
There has to be a shift in thinking by both in order to make change. Its entrenched in society - perhaps this is why immigrants fair better as the attitudes to class / regionalism are so deep. The working class can be their own worst enemy in this, and it needs to be pointed out and challenged as it holds back many as much as the actual lack of opportunity.
The EU referendum has brought this out even more. And May is actually still contributing to that, in her efforts to try and 'bridge' the divide and show that she somehow understands in the language she uses and the politics of the last couple of days. She doesn't get it. At all. She is still alienating rather than bringing people together.
This is why Brexit is probably doomed to fail for that reason. There is a short sightedness to it which sounds grand and moral to many but also doesn't encourage people to respect either other and to place value on excelling. It suggests that anyone in a position of success, has only got there because of their background as much as kids of underprivileged parents are sold short and therefore should be written off too. They haven't got great things to offer and their opinion is less worthy because they didn't face the same challenges. Their expertise and experience is worthless.
I find it depressing that being liberal or educated is being used as a byword for snobbery and elitism. Its not that simple. And ironically, education is more closely associated with socialist values rather than capitalism and individualism. The Tory Party is middle class in its base - but that's less educated older middle classes.
Stop treating education as a bad thing. Its not. Its entrenched snobbery, reverse snobbery and lack of opportunity.