Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges
I&#x27;ll zoom in on the diversity point, but I realise it&#x27;s not the whole focus of the article.<p>Seems to me the real point here is both blindingly obvious, and for some reason never discussed. Education is a pipeline, and everyone is obsessing over the final stage, forgetting the rest. It&#x27;s short-term thinking that misses the real problems.<p>If you want your society to produce successful university graduates from all demographics, you need to ensure all demographics have access to quality pre-university education. As I understand it, this simply isn&#x27;t the case in the US today. No-one seems to have any interest in improving the state of affairs. (Perhaps because it&#x27;s less glamorous than talking about universities?)<p>As it stands, the left-leaning suggestion is to explicitly weight the universities&#x27; admissions criteria to ensure an increased number of disadvantaged candidates are able to gain admission, despite falling short of the usual academic requirements (branded <i>positive discrimination</i>). A disproportionate number then fail in their studies, as the article says. The right-leaning suggestion is to do nothing at all, as far as I can tell.<p>Neither is a solution. Solve the pipeline problem. Invest seriously in pre-university education. I&#x27;m continually surprised that articles on the topic don&#x27;t even mention this in passing.<p>Disclaimer: I&#x27;m not an American, I&#x27;m not an academic, I&#x27;m just a random muppet on the Internet.