College admissions time is here, the traditional one anyway. That time of year when journalists used to use the cliché of a fat envelope (you were accepted and here’s some marketing crap) or a thin one (you were rejected, so sorry).

Now I wonder if there’s anything more selfish than focusing on getting your child into the “best” college. As economist Tony Carnevale observed: “access to college is increasingly concentrated among families with college-educated parents and high wages, and higher education is becoming a passive participant in a system that reproduces economic and cultural elites.”

They say it was always that way before World War II. Then the GI Bill and the Great Society programs “democratized” higher ed. Now, it’s moving back toward those good old days. Critics ask deadpan, Is higher ed worth it? Especially liberal arts and humanities programs? What’s the value proposition? What the ROI? (Of course, most of those commentators have college degrees, often in the liberal arts.)

Higher ed reformers now unabashedly say college is for getting a good job. They used to hide it. No more.

I ask if the new offerings won’t just make higher ed even more polarized. Privileged kids will go to residential places—sometimes referred to now as “coming of age” campuses. Other will go to more broadly available “commodified” open-learning offerings, some for-profit and many online.

It’s a have and have-not world … and higher ed is a leader.