This maybe a clickbait "outrage" piece pandering to reactions and offending the audience for profit. While it is true that many forms of extremism (woke, QAnon

This maybe a clickbait "outrage" piece pandering to reactions and offending the audience for profit. While it is true that many forms of extremism (woke, QAnon, Trumpism, neofascism, neocommunism, neoliberalism) have turned large swaths of society into liabilities, but I fail to see how closing-off opportunities to everyone arising out of one particular educational channel creates a "safe bet." It seems more like some sort of tribal virtue-signaling aligning towards anti-intellectual sentiments. The lack of leadership and mentorship is a structural, societal signal of overworked parents across-the-board. If you want better-behaved people entering society, then they need their parents around more and more interdependent in the neighborhoods they live in (community) rather than everyone alienated from each other (anti-community). I would put the blame squarely on the shoulders of a government drunk on the power of corporations to squeeze blood money out of people rather than pay them decently and let them have actual "work-life balance." There is absolutely no reason not to hire from any good university if the individual got there through merit alone, without the benefit of legacy. They would likely work harder than most because they often suffer from overachiever syndrome (OAS); it's very contagious and may cause resentment in mediocre coworkers. Edit: furthermore, when almost everyone's basic and material needs are over-met, there is a gradient of tendency for people to become pettier, more arrogant, myopic, hyper-individualistic, rude, and elitist because status becomes the most aspirational goal when there is nothing else for them to live for. It explains the genesis of why so many city people act Kafkaesquely-shallow and Seinfeldian. They have no real goals or purpose except maintaining and protecting their inflated egos. Edit2: Is the "self-esteem" movement perhaps, at the core, a manufactured, self-indulgent spin on the lionization of narcissism?