Comment by doctorpangloss

It’s even simpler than how you’re putting it. Gini coefficient has risen since 1980 and freshman class quality by objective measures like incoming grades and test scores is declining since 1993. It is really improbable that being rich helps you in college - in fact you don’t need to have a study at all to know that the opposite is very probably true. But people like the guy you’re replying to are so hung up on first principles thinking like “increasing selectivity means greater quality.” He thinks that’s axiomatic, when you need to conduct a pretty serious study to measure quality.

This study was good because it shows how being rich improves your admissions chances. Probably, increasing numbers of richer students have been causing class quality to DECLINE, not improve, and if it weren’t for donations funding research, the universities are actually WORSE off with the children of the merely richest Americans. This aligns with my experience at such universities, over many years, both as a student and an educator.