A slippery slope, indeed.

And there's a "B-side" to it, as well. Aforesaid daughter-- who graduated 3rd in her class, followed by an honors degree-- is now an "investor relations specialist" at a large real estate investment trust. This morning, she was telling me that she mostly "sits around and files and re-files paperwork, over and over, because there's nothing else to do." She "outgrew" her last position because she could do the job of everyone in that office, better than they could, themselves.

In other words, hand in hand with this decline in capacity, we also have employers whose expectations are that (new) hires are little more than "desk decoration."