I think that this is an essential and often overlooked issue. I hypothesize that institutions that market themselves as smart career choices to an already privileged student body provide access to well-paid positions of influence to those attending them and ultimately contribute to the increasingly unequal socioeconomic structures and international isolationist and extremist trends against which these institutions ostensibly advocate.

I think the Biden rhetoric, from Josh Johnson's gentle comedic joshing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAotsSoqcs8) to more virulent condemnation stems from this increasingly publicly expressed general sentiment of many engaged citizens who are muggles rather than magicians (and we can't all be magicians, I know, nor should we all aspire to be magicians - and there's the rub, I guess. There's no 'The Boys' out yet for children's literature...)

I think many of us feel ourselves an unwilling audience to a theatrical drama that impacts us non-elite (however one defines that) without being allowed to participate and with fewer and fewer routes and personal resources (time, money, etc.) for any sort of credible much less impactful or integrated influence on issues that affect our options in the day-to-day. It makes me think a lot about the work of Oscar Wilde (The Soul of Man Under Socialism), Nafees Hamid (KCL), and ContraPoints or Philosophy Tube on YouTube. It's not a new issue, but with the hyper-inequality of modern day combined with the efficiency of digital discourse, it's weird to have access to so much (dis/mis/mal/etc.) information and have so limited ability to use it effectively to improve social structures at scale. In a lot of places where I've worked (IOs, etc.) the goal becomes to 'raise' more people up. I'd settle for more of those on the dais lowering themselves to engage in an actual dialogue with those from outside their traditional sphere or (see my hypothesis in paragraph one to understand why...)

My interest lies in the institutional cognitive dissonance these elite and exclusive institutions unintentionally create by cultivating their self-concepts as meritocracies in a socioeconomic structure where merit is often rooted in financial privilege. For example, here I am commenting, but to what end? I don't actually expect a response from the author for reasons mentioned. Yet I want to participate, even if my participation is silly and unmerited and unimpactful. I feel a lot like that when I vote, honestly, but I still vote. I need to contribute, to take agency, but it feels like a very limited and one-sided form of statistically unimportant participation. Rather like this comment, I guess.