Higher education and social stratification

Institutions of higher learning fall into three strata: the elite, the middle, and the bottom. In general, the cost of tuition, the quality of students they accept, and the quality of the jobs they subsequently take are highly correlated, hence preserve and reinforce social stratification. Such stratification is incompatible with their proclaimed objective of promoting learning, and the author believes that their primary objective is to maximize the quality of work life of the faculty. Teaching is the price the faculty pays for this privilege and, like all prices, they try to minimzie it. The paper suggests (1) how to modify higher education so as to promote learning rather than teaching and (2) how to modify admissions so as to eliminate social stratification among universities and colleges and their graduates. The author is not optimistic about the chances for these changes.