>> 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 dream. [ screaming ] ♪

how did it become -- >> operation varsity blues. >> you don't need to work anymore. you don't need to study hard or be well-rounded. you just have to write a check. >> a nightmare. >> coaches, entrepreneurs, and celebrities. >> it may have looked like a hollywood premiere at times. >> lori, pay for my tuition, lori! i do want the experience of game days, partying. >> i don't really want to go to school. >> what do you say to your fans, felicity? two famous actresses caught up in 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. and it starts early.

the youngest we've gone for college consulting would be 3rd grade. >> 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 bryant conant 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. out there in america james conant believed among those working the fields were jefferson's diamonds in the rough just wanting to be discovered. >> let's find those people and bring them to harvard. >> but how to find them? conant 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 conant'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. no further 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 and do the right thing. you just have to write a check. seems like we're working for nothing if they're just coming and 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? pretending you're above that? 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 olivia 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. also don't let guilty by your guide. 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 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. >> allen koh 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.

koh shared clients with rick singer but says he had no idea what 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 donors. >> 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 kid 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 alumni, and jared kushner's parents had no connection to harvard. white house adviser jared kushner, 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 clear is that in this 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-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. ♪ turn around ♪ look at me

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what do you want to say to your former players, do you have any remorse, mr. meredith, your 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.

they were hit with more charges in october. >> 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.

famous for finally admitting women to the college. 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. alumni contribution fell off a cliff. 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 nation. 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. at berea college in kentucky, in order to get in here, you must be poor. when we come back. but i don't have to clean this, because the self-cleaning brush roll removes hair while i clean. - [announcer] shark, the vacuum that deep cleans now cleans itself. full of flavor. color. full of... woo! full of good. so you can be too.

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wheeveryone is different.ta, which is why xfinity mobile is a different kind of wireless network that lets you design your own data. choose unlimited, shared data, or mix lines of each and switch any line, anytime. giving you more choice and control compared to other top wireless carriers. save up to $400 a year when you switch. plus, get 50% off when you buy any new lg phone. xfinity mobile. click, call or visit a store today. annoepidemic fueled by juul use with their kid-friendly flavors. san francisco voters stopped the sale of flavored e-cigarettes. but then juul, backed by big tobacco, wrote prop c to weaken e-cigarette protections. the san francisco chronicle reports prop c is an audacious overreach, threatening to overturn the ban on flavored products approved by voters. prop c means more kids vaping. that's a dangerous idea. vote no on

juul. no on big tobacco. no on prop c. 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 must compete in a rigorous academic contest. >> you're sitting here today because you ranked in the three tenths of one% of a massive competition. >> earning a degree from yale is 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 including yale, princeton and brown, 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 berea ahead of time? >> the president of berea, lyle 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 a 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 hundred 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 philanthropy to give opportunity 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, this year it jumped 50 points making it one of the top 50 liberal arts clenls 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 k making my problems solvable, 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. jones! hey carl, what are you charging me for online equity trades? laughs/umm.. and do i get my fees back if i'm not happy? like a satisfaction guarantee? ugh. schwab! oh right, i'm calling schwab. thanks carl! wait, lisa! lisa... are you getting commission free trades and a satisfaction guarantee? if not, talk to schwab. a modern approach to wealth management. [ ty♪ing ] [ engine accelerating ] [ typing ] ♪

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affirmative action. . [ 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. allan bakke sued the medical school of university of california davis for reverse discrimination. the university had a quota. it reserved 16 spots for minority students. bakke 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. >> allan paul bakke. >> 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 sterling test scores and grades and hold them to a higher standard. although a federal judge ruled in october siding with the university, the case is far from over. that's because the man behind the lawsuit is edward blum, 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 is less than 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 as a way of deciding who gets an 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.

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, just not effective and we have to come up with a new approach. the two are in conflict, it's really one of the big fights in higher education. the delicious taste of glucerna gives you the sweetness you crave while helping you manage your blood sugar. glucerna. everyday progress.

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see how much you can save i was on the fence about changing from a manual to an electric toothbrush. but my hygienist said going electric could lead to way cleaner teeth. she said, get the one inspired by dentists, with a round brush head. go pro with oral-b. oral-b's gentle rounded brush head removes more plaque along the gum line. for cleaner teeth and healthier gums. and unlike sonicare, oral-b is the first electric toothbrush brand accepted by the ada for its effectiveness and safety. what an amazing clean! i'll only use an oral-b! oral-b. brush like a pro. 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 later served on the board of my undergraduate alma matter. so i both benefited from the merit-based system and also have 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 they're 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 aristocratic elements of admission such as legacies and athletic recruitment or they forsake merit and lower the bar for well-intentioned reasons, to

let in more students from certain minorities at the expense of others. this view holds that what is wrong with the meritocracy is that it is actually not mer meritocratic enough. there is another view that is more sweeping. it argues against the whole view of meritocracy itself. it believes that tests are arbitrary and not fully indicative of talent, that using them to organize and select society's elites is nuts, that it creates an atmosphere of crazy and relentless pressure for those on the inside and permanent exclusion for those on the outside. and because performance on these tests and associated rankings can be greatly enhanced by wealth and good education, it does produce a hereditary ariftocracy rather than churning out elite ppz both have merit but i confess i am drawn to the first, the idea that we need a better meritocracy. i understand the problem with the idea of merit.

but what would you replace it with? the old system based on blood lines 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 that 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 markovitz points out -- >> compresencively 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 enter 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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