Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent. - Laurence J. Peter

All, from police forces to armed forces, are rigid hierarchies of salaried employees, and all are necessarily cumbered with incompetents who cannot do their existing work, cannot be promoted, yet cannot be removed.

Such an extreme policy will not be generally tolerated. So, to avoid the accumulation of incompetents, administrators have evolved the plan of promoting everyone, the incompetent as well as the competent. They find psychological justification for this policy by saying that it spares students the painful experience of failure.

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don't let yourself indulge in vain wishes.