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Almost all colleges released their admissions results in late March. Now students have until May I to commit to a college of their choice, which means they will forfeit all the other colleges they have been admitted to. For those students that have been admitted to all the eight Ivies, it usually is a painful decision to let go of the other colleges, and you had a student such as Kwasi Enin in 2014, selecting Yale as the college he would attend, to which he cleared and right now he is almost finishing his medical studies at the University of Washington St.Louis, Washul. But why the competition for a narrow set of colleges? First of all, it has to do with the fact that it seems only the likes of Uber Private, flagship state universities, and the Ivy League and peer institutions assure one of a prosperous career in future. That is if you go to these colleges, then you are set for life.

That means that these days, parents are bequeathing their kids not with wealth, not with physical assets, but with high quality education. And increasingly, a parent that attended a high quality college is also likely to enroll their kid in a high quality college. That’s why increasingly, wealth is begetting wealth in America, and poverty is begetting poverty, and thus increasing the gap between wealth and poverty in America. In a forum at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Bernie Sanders says that in the last 50 years, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have transferred nearly $50 trillion in wealth to the top 1 percent, in what Sanders says has created an oligarchic society. Remember they say if a democracy is unchecked, it very quickly morphs into an establishment, then an oligarchy, then a dictatorship, and finally a monarchy.

Why is it that parents are willing to spend up to $150,000 on a college admissions counselor? It’s simply to increase the odds of success of their kid into a top school. So, even as the supreme court ruled out race conscious admissions in colleges, that would mean that the schools would likely become uniform in wealth bracket, because there is a high correlation between wealth and race in America. The fact that Harvard had 20 percent of students coming from first generation low income families is a testament the university is doing more to increase access to quality education. But really, there should be an increase in the number of quality colleges in America. The fact that there are 4,000 colleges in America and top students want only about 200 or so of those top colleges shows that equality of opportunity is wholly lacking in America. Education, other than death, is the greatest equaliser there is and that’s why expanding the quality of colleges in America should be a top concern for leaders. When a student knows they will do well regardless of the college they attend, then that’s when upward social economic mobility begins, and equality of opportunity is fostered. And there will be a side effect, they will enjoy their high school experience instead of starting to compete to which college they will be admitted to do early on.