semester, maybe you should do this, maybe you should do that. the result is a bright poor kid growing up in harlem or appalachipap lac appalachia will not have that on his resume. >> thanks to fareed zakaria. the special report starts now. i'm anna a cabrera. good night. >> announcer: the following is a cnn special report. i'll find out tomorrow or the day after if i'm getting into my dream school. >> the unbearable wait of the 18-year-old chasing the college agreement. [ screaming ] ♪

how did it become -- >> operation varsity blues. >> you don't need to work anymore. you don't need to study horde or be well-rounded. you just have to write a check. >> a nightmare. >> coaches, entrepreneurs, and celebrities. >> it may have looked like a wheel hollywood premiere at times. >> lori, pay for my tuition, lori! >> i don't really want to go to school. >> what do you say to your fans, felicity? >> what prosecutors are calling the largest college admissions scam ever. >> crazed parents doing whatever it takes. >> it's unbelievable. it is so competitive to get your kid into school today. >> the parents are terrified. >> it's parents who are driving a lot of this craziness. >> a fierce competition. >> top schools like yale, wake

forest, and georgetown. >> they're pushed, they're prodded. they're in the hands of tutors, coaches, test preparation. >> you may begin. >> it's a big money business. >> which can create packages that will break a million dollars. >> the real scandal may be what is legal. a side door for rich kid sport. >> there's only certain families that can afford to have children play some of these sports. >> we allow them to play these corrupt games with admissions. >> the system is broken. >> who is to blame? >> they set up a system that favors wealthy people and that made this scandal possible. >> finding the road back. >> dig deeper, dig deeper into which path is the clearest one to take. >> to what college is supposed to be. ♪

>> throngs of people hail the end of the war in europe. >> in america in 1945, anything seemed possible. >> and what a thrill. >> with world war ii over, the country was revving its engines. >> almost 50 million motor vehicles. >> and for a surging middle class, the american dream had a new name. the gi bill. for the first time, almost all who had served could go to college for free. >> any kind of education and in any part of the country. >> millions jumped at the chance. but the most elite schools still remained closed to many. they were private clubs, open

mostly to members of america's aristocracy. white anglo-saxon protestants. at harvard, one man wanted to open the gates. >> really get going. >> the school's president, james brian conan asked himself, what would thomas jefferson do? jefferson had written that america should create an aristocracy of talent to replace the aristocracy of birth and wealth. >> now he's about to enter an environment more in keeping with his social position. >> most harvard men, and they were still all men, came from prep schools with the right pedigree. >> at college he will meet men of his own kind. >> it's servants who went with them to harvard. they would put on their tuxedos every night and go to debutante

balls. >> good manners trumped good grades. >> he's handsome and charming, he writes thank-you notes. >> conan believed among those working the fields were jefferson's diamonds in the rough, just waiting to be discovered. >> let's find those people and bring them to harvard. >> but how to find them? conan decided that we needed a test. not to measure knowledge, greek, or higher mathematics. that would favor the well-schooled. >> this really isn't the kind of a test you can study for. >> instead we need a test that measures innate aptitude. harvard had such a test for scholarship student. >> ready? begin. >> and it became -- >> you may begin. >> -- america's s.a.t. a test for all americans. last year, 2 million students took it.

james conan's dream of a meritocracy -- >> and admit you to the fellowship of educated men. >> -- of the smartest, outshining the most privileged, seemed to be coming true. the s.a.t. was meant to be the great leveller. it would give everyone a chance to climb the ladder of success. and for decades, it did, bringing millions of new faces into america's establishment. but how did we go from creating an aristocracy of talent to spawning a criminal conspiracy? >> this college admissions scam story, the biggest ever prosecuted. >> do you want to say anything to your fans, felicity? >> the college admissions scandal. >> lori, lori, pay for my tuition, lori! >> is there anything you want to say to the charges against you? >> from the moment it hit the

headlines -- >> no comment. >> the massive sting exposing the ugly truth. >> america was appalled. >> are you satisfied with what the judge decided today? >> it's morally outrageous. you don't need to work anymore. you don't need to take your time a and do the right thing. you just have to write a check. >> they're just buying their way into college. >> having a lot of money is not part of what makes a person a person. >> the story behind the scandal was the stuff of tabloids. >> who's who of coaches, entrepreneurs, and celebrities. >> there isn't any -- >> all my favorites. >> you're asking for a bribe? i've got my checkbook. >> the actress felicity huffman pleaded guilty to paying $15,000. >> is prison the right sentence?

>> to inflate her daughter's s.a.t. score. >> i want to model for my daughters having a voice in the world. and, you know, that means having influence and having power, and to tell you the truth, having money. >> lori, straight ahead. >> we may have -- well, he may have embellished, lied a bit on our application. >> lori loughlin and her husband pleaded not guilty after allegedly spending half a million dollars to concoct phony profiles of their daughters as accomplished rowers. daughter jade got into usc even though she was neither a rower nor a scholar. >> i do want the experience of game days and partying. i don't really care about school, as you guys well know. >> this is a game. just realize that this is a game. >> at the center of the scheme, independent college counselor rick singer. >> sir, why did you game the

system? >> my key method unlocks the full potential of your son or daughter and sets them on a course to excel in life. >> singer showed an ability to con and dazzle even very successful people. >> they send their plane to come pick me up, come to the meeting for a couple of hours, two or three hours, put me back on the plane and send me to the next place i need to go. >> the hollywood names made the headlines. >> are you guilty? >> but some other parents were the most dumbfounding. singer charged this woman $50,000 to have a stranger take her son's a.c.t. her name is jane buckingham and she is a parenting expert. >> every working mom comes to me and says, how do i do it all? guess what, you can't. no one is super woman. so don't try to be. >> she even gave her son's

handwriting sample to make the forging easier. but buckingham did plead guilty to fraud. >> corruption is almost inevitable. it doesn't surprise me in the least that some people would try to game the system. the system is inherently phony. it's unbelievable. it is so competitive to get your kid into school today. >> frenzied parents lying and paying bribes to give their children a leg up. not exactly what thomas jefferson had in mind when he envisioned the meritocracy. but the founding father could not have foreseen this crazed competition. it's all because a four-year degree has become the great economic divider in america. people who have one will earn about twice as much in their lifetimes as those who don't. and those who get the golden ticket and ivy league degree

can, government figures show, earn more than double the income of other college graduates. >> parents get more and more anxious. that's why they turn to independent counselors. you know, they're can desperate. >> there are at least 15,000 private college counselors in america. you can find dozens of them on youtube. >> hey, guys, have you ever wondered how to get that elusive wow factor? >> today i want to speak about what you should never speak about during an ivy league admissions interview. >> many are reputable. but they are largely unregulated even as their business is exploding. >> we decline families all the time. a "c" average isn't going to get you into harvard and there's nothing any consultant can do about it. well, any legitimate consultant. >> he likes to start his clients early. >> the first time we're talking to them is fifth grade. the youngest we've got for

college consulting is third grade. >> you heard that right, third grade. ko shared clients with rick singer but says he had no idea who singer was doing. >> i was shocked that i knew someone who did this. i was shocked that this was even possible. >> and something else surprised him. the sums of money involved in the scandal. >> i think a lot of people were shocked because they were so big. i was shocked because they were so small. our most expensive college application package is $350,000. >> that price doesn't even include test preparation. >> everything is a la carte for test prep. for families who have special circumstances, we will create packages that can break a million dollars. >> mr. singer, do you have anything to say to the students who are in college now, what this might do to their lives? >> money is at the heart of the college admissions scandal. but more troubling than the bribes paid are the legal ways

that money is used to corrupt the process. wealthy parents spend lavishly to prepare their children. >> from childhood on, they're pushed, they're prodded, they're in the hands of tutors, coaches, test preparation. >> and it pays off. if you make over $200,000 a year, your kids will score on average 400 points higher on the s.a.t. than kids from low income families. wealth also gives students a big advantage if their parents are donor. >> at some schools, giving $10 million isn't enough, because $10 million makes no impact on their school. they want 30, 40, $50 million. >> rick singer convinced parents his schemes were actually a bargain. >> he was saying to the parents, yeah, you're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars but this is going to save you money. otherwise you would have to give

$10 million to one of these schools to get your schools in. >> this pulitzer-prize-winning journalist wrote a bestselling expose called "the price of admission." as his own alma mater, harvard, he looked at how often the children of big donors gained admission. >> harvard has this group called the committee on university resources, something like 400 people. then i came across jared kushner's parents on this committee. i was interested because most of the people on the committee were alium alumni, and jared kushner's parents had no connection to harvard. i began speaking with people family with jared kushner's high school record. it turned out he was not a particularly outstanding or motivated student. there was no lack of people willing to attest to that. >> charles kushner had donated $2.5 million to harvard.

jared got in. >> so what i don't understand is, how is it that harvard can let jared kushner buy his way in but it doesn't take a hit reputationally? we should adjust and just say, oh, okay, that's what a harvard degree means, all right. >> the kushner family has said there is no connection between the donations and jared kushner's acceptance. harvard does not comment on individual applicants. ivy league schools do point out that large donations give them the chance to educate students who could not otherwise afford them. they also contained some children of large donors are rejected. what is meritocracy, it still matters who your parents are, especially if they went to the school of your choice. legacy admission gives strong preference to the sons and daughters of alumni. >> legacy admissions, the idea that you get a special break

because your parents went there, why, is this feudal england? i can't imagine what the thought process is. >> they're terrified what would happen to their fundraising if they got rid of legacy preference. they believe a lot of alumni donate in the hopes of getting their children into the school. >> according to "the harvard crimson," one-third of last year's freshman class had relatives that went to harvard. legacy admission is deeply entrenched at many top tier schools. to understand what it all began, let me take you back to a troubling chapter from more than a century ago. >> they founded schools that their sons might absorb the accumulation of man's knowledge and wisdom. >> in the early 1900s, the number of applications from jewish boys to elite schools began rising. >> they tended on average to overperform academically and to, you know, have a sort of education-obsessed culture. >> anti-semitism was far more

prevalent then and concern grew over the number of jews at ivy league schools. >> they came knocking at the door of the ivies and the ivies were very uncomfortable with that. >> at harvard, president lowell openly called it "the jewish problem." his solution, count the jews to see how quickly their numbers were rising. >> they felt that jews will take over. >> according to this historian, administrators pored over records. but it wasn't always clear who was jewish. so a ranking system was used. j-1 for students who were clearly jewish. j-2, more than likely jewish. j-3, could be jewish. the findings, in 1922, harvard was 21% jewish. the president decided to take action. >> i am instituting a jewish

quota. >> there was strong pushback to the ugly idea of counting jews. >> they looked for ways to hold down jewish enrollment without actually having a specific jewish quota number or an anti-your polianti anti-jewish policy. >> several other ivy league schools, yale, columbia, were also dealing with the so-called jewish problem. one answer turned out to be legacy admissions. >> one of a greater society of free and enlightened men. >> schools began giving preference to the sons of alumni. the idea was if they did so, they wouldn't be able to take in as many jews. up next, the real corruption. sports. rick singer's dark scheme. >> what do you want to see from former players? >> to cash in on the enormous clout of college coaches. (paul) wireless network claims are so confusing.

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former players who trusted you? >> yale's soccer coach took over $400,000. >> he pleaded guilty to taking hundreds of thousands of dollars. >> stanford's sailing coach agreed to take over $600,000 for the sailing team. >> the fbi agreed the uc tennis coach was paid more than $90,000. >> any comments? >> in all, ten coaches and athletic officials were accused in rick singer's scheme. five have pleaded guilty and five not guilty. >> mr. singer, do you have anything to stay? >> all the students who were cheated. >> they were kept out of schools because of what you did. >> it's no coincidence that college sports is at the heart of the biggest college admissions scandal in history. >> singer worked with the parents to fabricate impressive athletic profiles for their kid. >> singer knew the recruitment of athletes was a weak link in

the admissions process. >> students' athletic credentials will be fabricated. >> -- accepted millions of dollars in bribes. >> coaches had enormous power to choose their recruits. >> what made you want to plead guilty? >> it was tough to bribe a whole committee. but you could bribe one person. schools say they are addressing the problem, stressing that they were victims in rick singer's scheme. but the system they created lives on, where some kids get huge advantages in admissions through the side door of athletics. >> they weren't the victims. i mean, that's ludicrous. they set up a system that favors wealthy people and that made this scandal possible. >> when people think of college sports, they often think of all american favorites like football and basketball. sports with lots of publicity and many low income and minority students. but there is also rowing and

lacrosse and water polo and other sports that a lot of rich white kids play and that many college applicants can't afford. elite colleges reserve a huge number of slots for all athletes. more than 30% of the class in some schools. and they dramatically lower admissions standards to let the athletes in. >> with all the preferences, the preference for recruited athletes is the biggest in terms of how much it helps candidates. >> take harvard, for example. every applicant's academic record is ranked on a scale from 1 to 6 with 1 being the highest. those who scored a 4 who were not athletes got in less than 1% of the time. but the athletes who scored a 4

got in around 70% of the time. harvard claims that no one is admitted based on one single trait. still, admissions at elite schools for athletes like lacrosse players is often effectively affirmative action for rich white kids. >> you can't play this absurd game where you have affirmative action program for rich white people because you have a back door for these sports. >> rich parents spend loads of money to help their kids become recruit-worthy athletes, paying hefty sums for coaching and camps. meanwhile, of course, many public school kids don't even have access to posh sports like golf and sailing. >> there's only certain families that can afford to have their kids play some of these sports. >> so why do elite american colleges favor athletes in the first place?

after all, other countries don't have these kinds of preferences for baseball players or skiers. >> people would look at you in england or germany and say, wait, what? >> one big reason for the favoritism is tradition. in the early 20th century, american colleges saw athletics as a way to mold young men's character. college sports grew wildly popular with the public. >> yale squared off against harvard in the final game of the season. >> spawning powerful athletic departments and loyal alumni. >> i think if you gave the average college president at these kinds of colleges a few drinks and said, do you want to dial this down, they would say yes. but they would say, the alumni, i would just hear from them immediately and they would put up a big fuss.

>> college presidents like to talk about meritocracy but in fact they kept key elements of the old aristocracy in place like athletics and legacies. >> yale was found more than two centuries ago by ten congregational clergymen. >> when one college president tried to take on legacies, all hell broke loose. kingman brewster was yale's president. he was eager to make yale more inclusive, courting more applicants from public schools. and he slashed legacy admissions by almost half in just one year. >> disaster. immediate disaster. >> the alumni revolted. yale graduate william f. buckley jr. lamented that the son of an alumnus now has less chance of

getting in from some boy from p.s. 109 somewhere. eventually brewster gave in and ever since, no ivy league school has dared to take on the preference for alumni's children. >> they're terrified what would happen to their fundraising if they got rid of legacy preference. >> but there are great schools out there that avoid legacy preference. and they're doing just fine. cal tech doesn't cater to alumni kids, and it has one of the largest endowments in the nature. even oxford and cambridge with their centuries of hallowed tradition refuse to favor alumni children. their endowments are well into the billions. >> we like to think that england is the land of social class and

aristocracy and america is the land of democracy. but at least in college admissions, the reverse appears to be true. >> when you add up all the admissions preferences at elite schools, like legacies, recruited athletes, and children of wealthy donors, you get an astounding number. at some schools, it's around 50% of the class. >> that is the behavior that's typical of some moribund, irrelevant, corrupt private club. coming up, there's one school in america that's doing admissions entirely differently. at baria college in kentucky, in order to get in here, you must be poor. when we come back. ♪ ♪

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graduation day. it is a celebration of one of america's most cherished ideals.

if you're talented and work hard enough, you can make it to the top. >> it's time for you to lead the way. >> you are the living, breathing proof that the american dream endures in our time. it's you. >> to make it into yale law school, the top law school in the country, students miscellaneomust compete in a rigorous academic contest. >> you're sitting here today because you ranked in the t top .03%. >> it's a golden ticket to the american elite. it's an exclusive club that includes bill and hillary clinton and four sitting supreme court justices. but in 2015, students at commencement got some bad news from this man. the meritocracy is a broken

system. >> we've constructed a gilded cage that ensnares the rich and excludes the rest. >> yale law school professor daniel markovits told students that the payoff they had been working for their whole lives is actually a trap. >> working from 8:00 a.m. to 58 p.m., six days a week, without vacation or sick days, for every week of the year. >> in other words, the system isn't even working for the winners. >> we're now in a state in which a narrow elite is much too rich for society's good and works much too hard for its own good. >> markovits' main argument is that by awarding a specific kind of achievement above all else, the meritocracy is making americans miserable and creating a hyperunequal society. >> if you're a middle class kid or a poor kid, you simply can't compete with the educations that rich kids are getting.

>> that's one of the reasons why at 38 of the most elite colleges, you'll find more students from families in the top 1% than the bottom 60%. but there is another way. an alternate universe, if you will. at a small liberal arts college in the foothills of appalachia. [ church bells ] berea college only admits high performing low income students who have been excluded from our modern meritocracy. rich kids need not apply. you heard that right. berea will reject their applications. it doesn't want their money. this college is completely free. 98% of freshmen are pell grant recipients and come from families that earn an average of $28,000 a year. >> it's a radical ideology. >> these are some of the poorest

kids in the country. >> had you heard of maria ahead of time? >> the president of berea, lyle rudol rudolphs, please this is the key to its success. >> no student feels stigmatized because all come from the same economic context. >> all students are required to work for the college at least ten hours a week. >> i know some students who looked up free college and found berea. >> this sounds fake. i was just like, this is a catch. >> i thought it was a scam, there's no way. >> but there is awe w way. in 1855, the college was founded to provide education to students excluded from colleges, including women and freed slaves. how do they do it? it now has a $1.2 billion endowment. while ivy league schools still admit the children of wealthy donors and legacies largely for

the sake of their endowments, berea has made it to the list of america's richest colleges another way -- shrewd investing and good old fashioned generosity. >> come join us, it's giving day! >> there's a fundamental impulse in american fiphilanthropy to ge to those who deserve it but lack the means. we've tapped into that for many years. >> data analysis takes a little while. >> if you're wondering how berea ranks academically, it's one of the top 50 liberal arts colleges in the country. but berea's president has pledged not to publicize its rankings. he believes they fuel the college admissions frenzy by focusing on the wrong metrics, money and status instead of

quality. berea's admissions office doesn't obsess about test scores or grades. instead, it identifies students who display extraordinary potential like mccall england, a senior who had always dreamed of going to college. mccall now works in the admissions office as a student manager and studies marketing. he spends any moment he cannon his true passion, making music. ♪ making the impossible possible, you can say i'm unstoppable ♪ >> i feel like this is somewhere i belong. i felt welcomed as soon as i got to the college and was shown all these different resources, wow, these people actually want to help me succeed. >> the college has built a culture in which students help each other to succeed. >> it means the world to me. i feel like this is home for me. i do feel like this is home for a lot of people. >> dan markovits thinks berea's

model provides one possible solution to the madness of the meritocracy. >> an excellent education is an education that teaches you what you need to know, the knowledge and the skills you need, in order to do good work that's useful. >> dig deeper, dig deeper, dig deeper into which path is the clearest one to take that will make you become successful. >> the universities are realizing that their current business model is just too hungry for assets and status and privilege and they've got to diversify. up next. >> we won't go to the back of the line. >> the explosive battle in college admissions over affirmative action. at t-mobile unlimited talk, text and data is just 30 bucks a line for 4 lines. and now you can get it on our newest, most powerful signal. no signal reaches farther or is more reliable. get 4 new lines of unlimited

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[ crowd chanting ] affirmative action. >> affirmative action is leveling the playing field. >> to understand just how politically charged the issue is -- >> we won't go to the back of the line! >> -- consider this. >> one of the most important civil rights cases in over 20 years. >> one landmark supreme court ruling still stands as the benchmark for minority college admissions. but it came over 40 years ago. and it involved a white man. alan boki sued the medical school of university of

california davis for reverse discrimination. the university had a quota. it reserved 16 spots for minority students. boki argued he was more academically qualified than the students who filled the quota. the court ruled in his favor in 1978. racial quotas were deemed illegal. >> alan paul boki. >> they said once again that white rights are supreme in this country. >> but affirmative action wasn't dead. the court also said that race could be considered in admissions but only as one of many factors. and now, another legal battle threatening to end affirmative action once and for all. this time the scene is harvard.

asian-americans sued the school, charging that harvard admissions officers disregard their terminology test scores and grades and hold them to a higher standard. although a federal judge ruled earlier this month siding with the university, the case is far from over. that's because the man behind the lawsuit is edward bloom, one of the nation's most influential and conservative opponents of affirmative action. >> harvard systematically raises the bar for asian-americans and systematically lowers it for whites, african-americans, and hispanics. >> blum has vowed to appeal that decision and many believe it will end with a national showdown at a supreme court dominated by conservatives, many of whom are long-time skeptics of affirmative action. >> one of the ironies of the harvard case is while it pretends to be about discrimination against asian-americans in admissions, it's really not.

it's really an attack on affirmative action for blacks and hispanics. >> but many colleges feel that affirmative action is still badly needed in admissions. a recent analysis done by "the new york times" found that black and hispanic students were more underrepresented at elite colleges than 35 years earlier. at the center of all this is a complex question with no easy answer. if, as thomas jefferson once posited, we should have a meritocracy, what he called an aristocracy of talent, then grades and test scores should be the deciding factor. but the opposing argument goes, those are just numbers that do not always tell the story of how deserving and how enriching students from different cultures, races, and backgrounds may be. but here's what happens when only academic merit is

considered in admissions. stuyvesant high school in new york city. it is one of the nation's top public high schools. graduate from here and you are likely to get into an elite college. how do you get in? take a single standardized test. it might sound fair but this is the meritocatic outcome. in a city that's 15% asian, stuyvesant is 75% asian. these demographics raise the question, can and should a standardized test decide who has access to the best schools? >> the way in which new york tried to deal with elite education and inequality is by having something like a fair test to decide who gets the elite education. and the consequence of that has been more and more unfair outcomes. >> in this year's freshman

class, only seven black and 33 hispanic students were offered places out of nearly 900 coveted spots. >> if you want to admit by those kinds of tests, it's at war with also wanting to admit more black and brown students. there's a historic racial gap on average in these kind of academic test scores. it's one of the most consistent findings in social science. the gap is actually closing but it's always been there. you have to dial down the importance of the test to dial up your racial diversity. >> mayor bill de blasio has called to scrap the current system in favor of diversity. the furious reaction from parents and lawmakers led the mayor to say he was going back to the drawing board. >> the attempt we made to

address it was not -- it just was not effective and we have to come up with a new approach. >> meritocracy versus diversity. must one come at the expense of the other? >> the two are in conflict. it's really one of the big fights in higher education. coming up next, my solutions. [ "turn around, look at me" -the vogues ]

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but don't just take my word for it. try it out and decide for yourself. switch to sprint and get both an unlimited plan and one of the newest phones included for just $35 a month. for people with hearing loss, visit sprintrelay.com. let me begin with a confession. i'm a member of the meritocracy. i went to an elite college and then graduate school on full scholarships. i both benefited from the merit-based system and also seen it from the inside and know that college admissions offices are overwhelmingly decent and honorable people actually trying very hard to balance all the factors that they are being

asked to consider when passing judgment on 18-year-olds. and yet there is obviously a problem with america's meritocracy. and the admissions scandal only revealed a small part of it. the critiques generally take one of two angles. the first is that america's colleges don't practice what they preach, that merit-based selection makes sense, but in fact almost all colleges have retained or even enhanced some of the old ariftocratic elements of admission such as legacies and athletic recruitment, or they foresake merit for well intentioned reasons to let in more students from certain minorities at the expense of othe others. this view holds that what is wrong with the meritocracy is actually it is not meritocratic enough. there is another critique that is more sweeping. it argues against the whole idea of meritocracy itself. it believes tests are arbitrary

and not fully indicative of talent, that using them to organize society's elites is nuts, that it creates an atmosphere of crazy and relentless pressure for those on the inside and permanent exclugsz for those on the outside. because performance on these tests and associated rankings can be greatly enhanced by wealth and education, it does produce a hereditary aristocracy rather than turning out elites based on ability. both critiques have merit, though i have to confess i am more drawn to the first, the idea that we need a better meritocracy. i understand the problems with the idea of merit, but what would you replace it with? the old system based on bloodlines and birth or an entirely subjective process in which admissions offices just pick their favorites? when you're dealing with tens of thousands of applications and are able to admit a small number, it means you have to rely on some blunt instruments like tests and grades.

many criticize the reliance on these kinds of objective indices, but few have been able to propose a workable alternative to them. that means universities should live up to their ideals rather than admitting athletes and legacies who are unqualified, they should focus on finding bright children from poor backgrounds who have great potential but don't score as well on these testing measures. many elite colleges today take in more students from the top 1% of the income distribution than from the bottom 60%. it cannot be that those millions of students have no talent. it's just that we don't have a good enough mechanism to find them. elite colleges should be taking in many more students anyway. even as their endowments have grown stratospherically, their class sizes have expanded very slowly. this emphasis on access should also animate politicians. the biggest problem with

american education is that it does very, very badly for poor kids. as dan marco vits points out -- >> comprehensively separates the rich from the rest in an increasingly unequal america. >> the educational gap between the rich and poor today is greater than between blacks and whites in 1954 when brown versus board of education outlawed school segregation. the american system of education does not provide many paths for poor bright kids to move up, which is at the heart of the scandal of our declining social mobility. finally, let's take to heart some of the broader critiques of meritocracy itself. many people succeed in life even though they do badly on tests. tests are not the measure of one's true worth in life, nor is where you went to college. perhaps the worst aspect of meritocracy is that it allows people who rise to the top to believe that they are better, that they deserve their success,

and that those who do not do so well deserve their failure. it makes us smug and insensitive, reproducing the worst aspects of the clubby aristocracy of old. that is the greatest moral failing of meritocracy and one that is best countered by recalling the wisdom contained in the declaration of independence, the bible, and most of the world's scriptures -- that all people are created equal and are of equal worth no matter where they got into college. i'm fareed zakaria. thanks for watching.

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