> bestowing a title of permanent employment and business advantage on a select group of people of average intellect
I don't think that elite colleges are a racket who hand out privilege like lottery tickets.
It has been shown in previous studies that people accepted to elite colleges and who don't attend do as well in life as those accepted who do attend. So that does suggest that the advantage is that elite colleges simply are able to select from people who are already very talented and confer no advantage through mere attendance.
On the other hand we have the Landry case. These were not random students but students who had been through a fairly unorthodox education to date, granted one that some have claimed to be fraudulent. However that education involved self study and online classes and possibly may have introduced students to the self discipline and initiative in study needed to succeed.
There are also cases such as Jaime Escalante and a few others who did things such as take over a class of the worst performing drop out bone headed students at a failing school, brought them enough up to speed to be able to score well on the AP Calculus test, and to this day all of them are doing much better than any of their peers who did not have Jaime Escalante as a teacher who said he believed in them and did something that enabled them to get into good colleges when their previous chance of getting into any college at all was nil.
These are not normal teachers though. The commonality is that all of them have been accused of fraud when their students do well. But their students do do well.