"Upper-middle-class American children get every advantage, from high-quality school districts to safe, clean streets on which to play, says Richard V. Reeves, author of the new book ‘Dream Hoarders’ and a senior fellow in Economic Studies and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institute.
They don’t also need the boost given by legacy admissions to ensure that they get coveted seats at the country’s most elite colleges.
‘To operate a hereditary principle in college admissions,’ he tells CNBC, is unfair. Especially for a country that fancies itself to be a meritocracy. To put it bluntly, he says, all the different ways upper-middle-class parents elbow competitors out of the way to get their kids into the best colleges amounts to ‘cheating.’"
Opinion.