By Richard D. Kahlenberg (NBC News).
As freshmen flood college campuses across the U.S. this year, Harvard University has trumpeted the fact that its incoming first-year class of 2021 is majority non-white. But it left something out.
In recent years, about as many Harvard students have come from the top 1 percent of families by income as the bottom 60 percent, according to a 2017 study. More have come from the top 10 percent by income than the rest of the population. Multi-racial aristocracy is better than all-white aristocracy — but it is still aristocracy.
Part of the problem is that Harvard gives admissions preference based on lineage — providing a significant boost based not on merit but whether or not one’s relatives are a member of the Harvard club.
In fact, a recent Harvard Crimson survey …Read the full article
