[Selective university admissions in America] have become our primary mechanism for convincing ourselves that poor people deserve their poverty, or, to put the point the other way around, they have become our primary mechanism for convincing rich people that we deserve our wealth.

If there really aren't [significant class differences at our best colleges] - if it's your wealth (or your family's wealth) that makes it possible for you to go to an elite school in the first place - then, of course, the real source of your success is not the fact that you went to an elite school but the fact that your parents were rich enough to give you the kind of preparation that got you admitted to the elite school. The function of the (very few) poor people at Harvard is to reassure the (very many) rich people at Harvard that you can't just buy your way into Harvard.

Affirmative action - designed to convince all the white kids that they didn't get in just because they were white - plays a somewhat bigger role (hence the passionate support for it among upper-middle-class white students: Every black face they see on campus makes them feel better about themselves).