The two problems are closely connected. If one were to audit the elite where I went, one would find many scandals like this, albeit more cleverly disguised and perhaps legal. Good questions to ask:

- How many state school faculty come from elites?

- Why do we structure education as an elitist competition for a brand stamp? Why should someone have an advantage in life by having "Yale" stamped on their CV?

Many countries have roughly equal funding to all school, and similar admissions standards. Universities are nice in that as a freshman, you can take a freshman course or a grad-level course. What's the upside of sorting kids by background and sending them to different universities?

All schools also strive to move up US News and be like Harvard/Yale. If Yale jumps off a bridge, the state schools WILL almost always follow. The impact of what happens at the elites is disproportional.