Colleges, at least in their purest form, take all the intelligent high schoolers and sort them into little enclaves with the other intelligent high schoolers. And some of them go on to become lawyers, some investment bankers, and some get PhDs and end up back in the enclaves teaching the next generation of intelligent high schoolers.
And the thing about meritocracy is that the smart kids aren’t like the other kids, in so many ways, and this system puts them in bubbles where they never have to interact with the rest of America again. And colleges recognize this, and try to look like America in the most superficial ways, namely skin color and parental income. (Of course, they’re doing much better on the first than the second.) But that doesn’t really help, it just means instead of the smartest kids you’re getting the smartest white kids and black kids and Latino kids and Asian kids with a few first-generation college students thrown in and it’s not really that different.
Because I know the Red Tribe exists only intellectually. Because I don’t know any evangelical Christians, or people who smoke cigarettes or have been to Branson or even know where Branson is (thanks Charles Murray). Because I asked my friend to guess who there are more of in the US, Jews or Catholics, and she guessed Jews. And I can’t even blame her, because searching “catholicism” and “catholic” in my school’s course catalog gives 8 results total, and “judaism” and “jewish” give 187.
(my dad is Jewish and my mom is Catholic so I think I’m allowed to make this comparison)
And of course if you really want to look like America, you’re going to have to discriminate against oppressed minority groups and so they do. And I guess college admissions officers seem to sleep fine at night despite this but I’m not sure if I’d be able to.
So we get an intellectual elite that focuses on some questions, perspectives, and experiences to the exclusion of others. And they talk to the rest of the elite and breed with the rest of the elite and are just increasingly detached from anything resembling the real world.