How Higher Education Can Win Back America

Wesleyan University (CT) President Michael S. Roth writes: 

Anti-elitism runs so deep in American culture that even our founding fathers thought it was old news. In 1813 Thomas Jefferson warned that the “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents,” represented “a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.” Like James Madison and Ben Franklin, he worried that this elite was interested in protecting its own privileges rather than the good of the Republic.

Today, that system has attracted a great deal of criticism for accomplishing the opposite outcome. It’s still true that when poor people attend a highly selective university, they are likely to greatly improve their economic prospects, but a majority of those attending such schools are from wealthy families. It’s those families that can enroll their children in the best public or private schools and afford tutors, coaches and fancy résumé-boosting summer programs.