When I hear this, I suspect that the professors are defining student quality as whether or not students have the personality traits typically imparted by high-S

When I hear this, I suspect that the professors are defining student quality as whether or not students have the personality traits typically imparted by high-SES parents (such as intellectual curiosity), not whether students are able to ace their final exams. Honestly, though, I don't believe that it's easier for low-SES students to get into Harvard now than it was in 1993. It might be easier for them to attend, because of more generous aid packages, but I think that it's a lot harder for them to clear admissions. It's probably easier for them to be admitted than it was in 1950, but tougher than it was in 1993. Perfect SATs and high school grades are no longer enough to get into a top college. Extracurriculars and internships (during high school) are much more essential now than in '93, because everyone has near-perfect numbers, and these factors break the tie. These "soft factors" are obviously much more SES-loaded, in favor of the rich, than grades or test scores. Very rich parents can buy a resume that makes Ivy League rejection improbable, assuming the kid takes his prep high school courses, and his SAT tutor, seriously. Professors who complain about student quality are not comparing 2008 to 1950, but to the 1990s and possibly '80s, so the stretch over which the comparison is made is one in which the barriers to entry, for hard-working low-SES students, became higher due to all the soft-factor garbage that Ivy League colleges now require, all of which is much easier for the well-off to game. Incidentally, the complaint often heard from these professors is not that students have become stupider, but that their minds are narrower and that they tend to be strivers and game-players rather than aspiring scholars. It seems like this change in student body character would result, at least in part, from the increased focus on so-called "leadership" and ticket-punching garbage between 1993 and 2008. One point I will concede to you is that it's nearly impossible 4 years of one's life, in earnest, to intellectual development, as opposed to mere career training, if one doesn't have an assured sunny future, and that fewer students at elite colleges have such futures. This might explain the rise of the pre-professional college student. You might want to correlate this with SES: In the golden era of undergraduate education, elite college students had awesome futures locked up and could devote serious time to intellectual development, for its own sake. Now that they're insecure strivers without assured good futures, they've turned into pre-banker douchebags who ask what will be on the test, cram and forget everything they learn. I'd counter this argument by noting that the social change is not in the SES of those who attend elite schools (there's no data to support a downward shift) but rather is the fact that, due to the past three decades' sociological contraction-- in spite of economic expansion-- upper-middle-class college students no longer have nice futures locked up to the extent that they would have had in previous generations.