Are Colleges Becoming a Self-Perpetuating Caste System in US?

Niall Ferguson argues they are.

School is in the air. It is the time of year when millions of apprehensive young people are crammed into their parents' cars along with all their worldly gadgets and driven off to college.

The rest of the world looks on with envy. American universities are the best in the world—22 out of the world's top 30, according to the Graduate School of Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Once it was Oxford or Cambridge that bright young Indians dreamed of attending; now it is Harvard or Stanford. Admission to a top U.S. college is the ultimate fast track to the top.

Little do the foreigners know that all is far from well in the groves of American academe.