Why are universities full of the children of rich people?

It used to be that going to university was a preserve of the elite. Only the very rich could afford to send a fop off to a gilded existence of drink and sex and little work for 3 or 4 years. The poor just got on with the daily grind.

Then it became axiomatic that universities must be open to all, but somehow, it seems that most of those getting in are still stubornly from the middle and upper classes.

Why is this so?

I had a look at a Greenpeace survey tonight. Have a look at the results and then go to page 9. That is where the survey is broken down by income levels.

The stand-out figures for me are the "don't know" results when people are asked about whether enough is being done about global warming and all that crap.

31% of those earning under $30,000 a year don't have a clue.

The figure is 16% for those earning over $30,000 a year.

That to me says that those earning under $30,000 just aren't following any issues of the day. None. Nada. They can probably tell you to within a cent the price of Winfield Blues at every bottle shop and TAB within a 10km radius, but wouldn't be able to name the Prime Minister.

I know I am using a big brush here, but many of them are the Great Unwashed. They are the Sink of Low Expectations. They are the Dumping Ground of the Unmotivated. Why should we think that the offspring of these types should turn out to be Beethoven?

Yes, the great mixing of genes will allow two gumbies to mate and produce a prodigy. Two rocket scientists can also couple and the result is an intellectual squib (to borrow from Harry Potter). You never know how the dice will roll. But I would have thought that in the main, succesful people breed more succesful people. Proles pump out more useless proles. That is why the middle and upper classes get their sprogs into uni - the parents are succesful, pushy types that have clawed their way up the slippery pole, and they have bred and cultivated their offspring to do the same. No amount of quotas or subsidies or other bullshit will ever overturn that.

What the stupid, quota loving, levelling down leftie idiots forget is that if someone gets admitted to a "proper" university (and not a jumped-up TAFE), it is the result of 17 or 18 years of hard work by the parents, the sprog, their peers and teachers. It is not an overnight thing. 17 years of training, moulding, example-setting and effort produce the required result. Parachuting someone into Uni via a quota is not the way to get the right people into areas of academic excellence.