Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

A recent study by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission in the UK has shown that young working-class people are finding it increasingly hard to get into top jobs in the UK. More than two-thirds of job vacancies in top legal and financial firms go to graduates from private or grammar schools, who make up just 11 percent of the UK population. Accent plays a particular part, with hiring managers often turned off by regional tones perceived as "working-class."

This should come as no surprise. Social inequality in the UK, like the rest of Europe, has been growing over the last few decades, though not to the extent of the US. This is often measured in terms of the wealth gap, but perhaps even more important - though not unconnected - is the gap in opportunities created by a growing credentialism and the death-grip of finance and other destructive sectors on the economy.

As late as the 1970s, there were multiple paths to success in British society open to bright young men and, to a lesser extent, women, from working class backgrounds. Firms often hired for starter positions at 16 or 18, many jobs didn't require degrees, let along advanced degrees, and not going to university was treated as perfectly normal.

Today, university effectively acts as a filter, closing off chances for those who don't or can't attend. There are paths to success that don't involve a degree, but they're becoming fewer and fewer. People's chances in later life are increasingly being set by the conditions they live under before they turn 18. Take the most obvious example; the state or private school divide.

Almost every student from private schools (confusingly, often known as "public schools" for historical reasons in the UK) attends university, compared to a rate of less than 50 percent for the country as a whole. And at top universities like Oxford and Cambridge, you're twice as likely to get in if you went to a private school.

Ironically, studies show this has very little to do with the quality of education as such. Private school students, rather, are given extensive training and backing in gaming both the admissions process and the examination system. It's an open secret that private school students receive extensive help from their schools for the coursework portion of their exams, for instance, well beyond the limits set by the examination boards. And the schools usually provide private training and prep for the grueling Oxbridge interview process.

Those problems are compounded when you first start applying for jobs. Then there's the London-centric nature of business. That keeps many working-class kids out, unable to afford the cost of surviving through unpaid or poorly-paid internships in order to get a hold in a field.

Then, as the study points out, there's the corrosiveness of class and dialect. When I was at university, you could watch students with regional dialects shedding them over the first few months, adopting an affected Southern accent or the mockney tones of the posh.

The excuses offered for this are the same as ever; that clients want to hear people like them, that people used to wealth and privilege will be more "comfortable" in the firm's environment, and so forth.

Here's the thing. A 22-year-old raised in privilege is likely to be more confident, better traveled, and more self-assertive than one from a relatively disadvantaged background. That's what wealth and power gets you; the easy confidence that the world is made for you. But when firms look only for that and don't weight candidate's backgrounds and experience, they miss out on huge pools of talent and perpetuate the same incestuous oligarchies that are increasingly making the UK elite as haplessly inbred as the Hapsburgs.

But we shouldn't see this as just an English problem, whatever the country's traditional questions with class. It's strongly visible in the US, where access to power centers like New York and San Francisco is more closed than ever, and the chances of a child born into poverty increasingly bleak.

And it's certainly visible in China. Although the country's gaokao system theoretically guarantees equality of university admissions, the country's new urban rich have access to tutors, good schooling, and need lower gaokao scores for top colleges thanks to the power of metropolitan hukou (residence permits). And when they get into the workplace, while the definition of "poshness" may not exist, there's strong discrimination against non-standard Putonghua speakers. Candidates with heavy local accents are perceived as slower, less connected, and less attractive.

Openness to talent, from whatever background, is one of the factors countries need most. Losing that has created calamity for the West, and it would be a disaster for China too.