The elite schools are cartels of opportunity that feed themselves a self-affirming diet of the smartest people to maintain their place. It’s a diversion to look at your race versus somebody else’s race. That’s only a small fraction of the admission. A fraction of the best and brightest across races will gain admission, but the rest are usually the elites. These people pay for college out-of-pocket but the colleges themselves don’t actually need tuition to function, their endowments are well-funded by the same families ahead of time to maintain the business talent conduit.

So what does the elite institution actually do? It largely feeds the smartest to lower business ranks to allow elites to better their portfolios. You are smart when you get out to Harvard and you’ll still be smart when you leave. A great school would change low performers into high performers, but that’s not what Harvard does, it looks for those who will already do well after Harvard. Note that with the business focus on DEI, elites need DEI in their portfolio, but nepotism comes first. DEI is a worthy cause to address structural inequities, but it’s now also a business scorecard.

A meritocracy would eliminate the legacy admissions and make admissions not only need-blind but also PII blind. Some elite universities have done need-blind, but this is only sustained by their endowment which is predicated on admitting the less qualified legacies. A meritocracy like this is only possible if the endowment is self sustaining or the college is a public institution. But is meritocracy what we want? Should we focus the most energy on advantaging the already gifted?

It’s notable that in other areas of the world, public institutions provide the best education. Here society is less stratified and college is for learning more than networking. What is needed for the same in the US is a change in perception about our elite schools.