I work for public universities with students looking for grants. One of my biggest frustrations is the bubbles our growing inequality fosters. Capable students need better access to relevant jobs/opportunities because what masquerades as 'objective' criteria are ultimately subjective and miss an intersectional understanding of the multiple socioeconomic variables impacting an individual's education. Criteria require exposure to networks and concepts often tied to socioeconomic, hereditary, and/or geographic privilege.
Alternatively, I have also worked with funders and those hiring, who typically have easier access to well-paid and influential opportunities because they fit the criteria due to their background/birth/location and how they've chosen to make use of it.
Both of these bubbles have blind spots, but I would argue the most challenging blind spots to overcome recently are those found in the bubble with easier access.
It's one thing to research and try to participate in the finance sector, for example, and learn through engaging with 'the matrix' as you put it. Capable students will do that, and if they are fortunate, these students may achieve some access to capital or whatever they need to construct the life they aim for, with social mobility as a possible side effect.
However, suppose a capable student born with easier access learns about socioeconomic barriers in the classroom but never has to engage with those barriers or have experience with such barriers. In that case, explaining what such barriers concretely entail is often insufficient for deconstructing them.
Sometimes, I feel like I'm running between the more and more out-of-touch, if well-intended upstairs and the far more pragmatic, increasingly less resourced and competitive fast-learning downstairs, and the distance is growing. I almost lost my temper in one meeting when another (again, well-intentioned) individual talked about 'breaking the cycle through education.' I wanted to shout that education related to inequality is your problem, not theirs - you break your cycle with education or structural change or something, but stop pretending this is a problem you can help solve because all you offer is money for education and never enough educational equity.
Except...I'm unsure how that might be done in the current system.
