That’s not the point. In addition to any inherent advantages for children of graduates from elite universities, there is an explicit bias in their favor for admissions decisions.

Yes, an explicit bias in favour of students more likely to be useful to the university.

An inbuilt assumption of what you say is that you believe in meritocracy, specifically that the powerful and wealthy are that way at least part by merit. The flipside of this assumption is that poverty is a personal moral failure.

Personally i reject both of these assertions. So much of wealth can be attributed to imperialism, war, slavery, segregation, instituational discrimination and so on.

But let's assume what you say is true: if the wealthy are that way out of merit and they have more ability, intelligence or whatever, why do they need an davantage in college admissions at all? Wouldn't their own merit shine through?

Wealth already gives a host of advantages: opportunities, tutoring, access to people and not having to, say, work jobs to just survive. On top of all those advantages, why do they also need systemic bias in admissions?

The system is unfair by design because it needs to be for those who benefit from it.

When did I ever say that the children of wealthy alumni should be prioritised?

I'm not assuming that the wealthy are there by merit, I'm assuming that the competent are.

And yes, universities will admit the idiot sons of the rich, just because of a donation - but that's an entirely different conversation to one regarding the prioritisation of the children of alumni who already proved themselves to be useful.

Bret Weinstein suggested this on his podcast - that we select leaders because they would do the best job - and we DON'T let them self-select. They're called to serve similar to jury duty. I don't recall how the selection would be done, which seems like the harder part.