So do you think that the US higher-ed system is inherently flawed also, with competition between high achievers (i.e. Harvard) and schools that anyone can get into? It's true that there are more resources associated with success, but doesn't that also incentivize people to work harder to end up in the higher bracket? I don't see the "Class-C" problem as necessarily a problem, so long as the person in "Class-C" has the opportunity to get back to Class-A by putting in the appropriate work.

My own feeling (having also observed higher ed in Europe and Asia and other places) is that the US system works better for cultivating high achievement, but less well at making sure that lower achievers maintain a certain level of quality. This means that there is more spread over the bell curve and less in the center. Europeans, on the other hand, seem to prefer more clustering in the center of the bell curve.

This is equally true for wealth acquisition, btw, with Europeans generally preferring not to have extremes (i.e. extremely high wage earners or extremely low wage earners).