[Drill Thrawl]

"...but this article is just blather."

BINGO! Note the key word in the following.

In words, it is a truth universally acknowledged that having an elite public higher education system is in some sense “good” for society.

Based on the evidence of the last 5 decades, I'd say academic elitism has done a great dis-service to our country.

[darth]

Higher education has become a way for leftists to indoctrinate your children and make YOU pay for it.

Reforming universities is another way of de-funding the Left.

[lentulusgracchus]

Based on the evidence of the last 5 decades, I'd say academic elitism has done a great dis-service to our country.

You might be interested to disinter and read some of James Fallows's old writings on the baneful "blessings" of meritocracy and elitism. He disarticulated meritocracy in a moderately long article that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly some 20 years ago. Might be worth bugging your librarian to dig out her Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature and hunt it up for you as a service of the library .... might also be listed in Lexis/Nexis.