THE SUPREME COURT: A NEST OF CLUELESS, OVERPRIVILEGED ELITES.

• Author: Hightower, Jim

Here's an embarrassing turn of events: The six rightwing ideologues now controlling the U.S. Supreme Court recently decreed that helping some students get into college through affirmative action programs is henceforth unconstitutional.

This is somewhere between clueless and cynical.

America's higher education establishment has long promoted a self-serving conceit that entrance to its campuses is based on meritocracy. Blatant racial and gender discrimination, however, put the lie to that, so schools adopted affirmative action policies to help rebalance the mix. The six supreme partisans have now killed this effort, replacing it with--nothing.

Meanwhile, our college system is becoming even more exclusive because of a deeply ingrained institutional bias that deliberately shuts out millions of the best and brightest, no matter their race, gender, or religion. That bias is economic class. From prestigious private schools to most big-name state universities, recruitment and admission procedures overwhelmingly favor those families privileged to have money and social standing. No matter how smart or promising working class and poor students are...