While this may be true for individual cases. Statistically the argument is worthless. Frankly, it's a comforting lie that encourages harmful inaction by instilling a false sense of the playing field being close to even.
The children of the top 1% make up 14.5% of the admissions to these schools. The chart of students by parental income[0] speaks for itself.
The children of the bottom 20% make up a mere 3.8% of the student body. I'm not sure how anyone can look at the current situation and suggest there's nothing wrong with it.
Perhaps these people are inherently inferior? Instead, I would suggest that we should do something about the talent that we're intentionally wasting.
No, what was said is that ~15% of the student body is in the top 1%. The top 5% by income make up 42% of the student body. I'm not sure about your own definition but I wouldn't qualify that as middle class.
I don't view 95% of the population making up 58% of the student body as an indicator that we're doing things particularly well. Especially when you don't ignore the fact the bottom 20% make up only 3.8% of students and the bottom 60% of the population only account for 18%.
These statistics fly in the face of any belief in meritocracy, social mobility, access to education, academic achievement etc. They imply either the children of the top 5% are genetic superhumans or that, as a society, we're failing spectacularly at living up to those goals.
> That's more than all of Scandinavia's population combined. Goes a long way toward explaining why so many "big" startups come from the USA.
Expand it to all of the European countries with free healthcare to match the populations and the outcome is the same.
There is some subset that has to bail because of healthcare, but it’s not relevant in the larger picture.