Elite universities are the tip of a massive iceberg and they already have programs to offer full free rides to otherwise eligible students that can't afford it. The problem starts based on leisure time to parents when their kid is 1 year old and being able to read to them (and having access/time to get to libraries or buy books). It then comes in from having money to buy houses in places with good school districts (which are usually funded by property taxes, so those are inextricably linked in the current setup). Then it comes paying for extracurriculars, summer programs, test prep, and in some cases private schools with better academics and student:teacher ratios. After 20 years that adds up and you see inequity (across the board, to be clear, at private college levels, not just the ivies) at college admission levels. You can't throw a bandaid at the top of the problem and wipe your hands of it, and a microscopic manifestation of the problem can only do so much to fix it.
Ivy Leagues don't sit around worrying about their brand, they already have the best students in the whole world applying and they only admit a few percent of them. And you can easily pay more for a degree: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-expensive-colle... so it's not an issue of cost.
Yea, this is spot on.
They love the exclusivity, status and authority. Authority and social justice go hand-in-hand.
It's an end-justifies-the-means movement, so they'll use whatever blunt object they can find to bludgeon people.
The problem is never why we shouldn't get more people into Ivy League, nor why don't we get more poor kids into Ivy League, or even just bring them into college. The problem is, in the era you can learn literally pretty much almost anything online, the cost of learning is very cheap, and yet people are arguing education is human right, so government should just wipe out student loans? I think the real solution is to look at how education works now and solve the problem with new technology. However, it would be very hard to do and may take very long time, given the Ivy League folks are pretty much the same group of people in power, none of them would like to make their degree looks cheap, and the irony is they often claim that they support social justice. If people truly care about social justice, it's time for people to think about the college requirement for a job and Ivy League only hiring policy.