I think this elite notion is over-simplified and inaccurate. It suggests that some significant portion of students are at these kind of "walled garden", elite institutions where students become disconnected from the struggles of "real people".

80% of students go to a school where over half of applicants are accepted. Yes, these schools definitely are centers of, frankly, liberal idealism and free-spiritedness. But I think that would be the case in any system where young people are pretty unsupervised and have lots of time to read and study (or party). In my experience though, they aren't factories for elites in the common sense of that word. They're just a reflection of how you need much more training to be competitive in the job market today.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/harvar...