This author wants to talk about broad access to education instead. They note correctly that there are really not that many people who are affected by these policy squabbles and far more who benefit from getting access to higher education of any non-elite quality.
The students who accumulate crippling debt usually attended second and third tier private colleges. Those are generally a terrible value.
In San Francisco, where I live, some in the community are challenging smart kids tracking into exclusive experiences in public K-12 schools.
Among people who are eligible for tracking, tracking seems really popular. But the plurality seems really unhappy with it. So there will always be XYZ, a word I cannot use, in communities to de facto track in public schools, or sometimes there will be legacy admissions, or whatever.
Maybe you don't believe these stylized facts. Like you already sound like the same people in this community who want to end tracking: us vs. them. I know you probably don't actually want that, but you're the perfect example of a tipping point, expressing an eensy weensy amount of resentment for "elite school buddies," that somehow winds up in "end gifted programs." Surely you see that.
Quality of education alone is hard enough to control for. What’s stopping the for-profit elite schools from just raising the bar until public schools simply can’t keep up?
If MIT and Stanford raise the bar on education, isn't that a good thing? Don't we want them to be giving the very best education that they possibly can?