Colleges fiercely defend America’s deeply stratified higher education system, arguing that the most exclusive schools reward the brightest kids who have worked hard to get there. But it doesn’t actually work this way. As the recent college-admissions bribery scandal demonstrates, social inequalities and colleges’ pursuit of wealth and prestige stack the deck in favour of the children of privilege. For education scholar and critic Anthony P. Carnevale, it’s clear that colleges are not the places of aspiration and equal opportunity they claim to be.