Graduate student Jeremy Carl has a good rebuttal to the recent NY Times op-ed by Jerome Karabel, which blasted elite institutions for perpetuating the economic dominance of the white upper class.
I’d add this point. The notion that upward mobility depends on graduating from one of the nation’s “elite” schools is insupportable. The education a student gets in the classrooms there isn’t necessarily any better than at a non-elite school; in fact, it may well be poorer. People succeed or fail on the basis of their accomplishments, not their academic credentials.
Talking about elite colleges and universities as if they alone enable people to enjoy upward mobility is like the rooster thinking that his crowing causes the sun to rise.