The Admissions Lie That's Costing Universities Everything

Ultimize. A Yale committee just released a report saying colleges themselves bear real responsibility for the collapse in public trust in higher education, citing high cost, opaque admissions, grade inflation, and confusion about what universities are even for anymore. And I have to say, congratulations to Yale for discovering that when people charge you the price of a beachfront condo for 4 years of school, some resentment may step in. Some resentment goes up because let's get specific here. Let's look at the numbers. In 1980, Yale's published tuition, room and board for the next academic year, it was $9,110. For 2026 to 2027, Yale's published total for tuition, housing, and food is $94,100. This is a nominal increase of about 933%. Even after adjusting for inflation, the current Yale sticker price is still about 2.6 times the inflation-adjusted 1980 price. If Yale had merely tracked inflation, the bill would be roughly $35,600, not $94,100. So no, people are not hallucinating an affordability crisis. They're reading a bill. And this is the part elite universities hate to hear. They did not simply become more expensive educational institutions. They became luxury brands with classrooms attached. Yale, Harvard, Princeton, these places now operate partly as status merchandise. They're the Louis Vuitton handbags of American ambition. They're not just selling learning, they're selling scarcity, prestige, and the social thrill of saying at a dinner party, My Madison got into Yale, but she's still deciding between that and Princeton. That's not education. That's country club performance art with better landscaping. The whole luxury brand model depends on one thing: artificial scarcity. Yale's own admissions data shows applications in the tens of thousands and admit rates that remain tiny. The harder it is to get in, the more valuable the brand becomes. If everyone could buy the handbag, it would just be a bag. If everyone could go to Yale, it would just be a school, and these institutions know that. That's why I like the Scott Galloway-style argument that if elite universities want to keep their privileges of tax-exempt educational institutions under the Section 501(c)(3) statutes, they should be forced to expand access dramatically or lose those privileges. The IRS says 501(c)(3) entities are supposed to be organized and operated for exempt purposes such as education, not velvet rope prestige machines. Yale itself describes the university as a tax-exempt charitable organization. So at some point, the public is allowed to ask a rude but fair question: how much public benefit are we really getting from institutions that behave like Hermes with lecture halls? And here's my version of reform. Any college that takes federal money, federal research support, or participates in federal student aid systems should have to— by the way, that's everybody— they should have to reserve at least 10% of each incoming class for a pure random lottery among applicants. No legacy choreography, no mysterious holistic incense, no dean squinting at an oboe recital. Summer in Provence and a $20,000 fencing hobby trying to detect leadership. Just a lottery, then track the outcomes 10 years later. My guess, and I could be wrong, a whole lot of these lottery kids would do just as well as the ones chosen by the current priesthood of prestige. And that would terrify the prestige industry because it would reveal that much of this so-called meritocracy is just expensive theater. And then we get to one of the dirtiest little scams in the whole operation: athletic admissions, especially in sports that function like affirmative action for the rich. Economists analyzing Harvard admissions data found recruited athletes had an 86% admit rate, more than 14 times the rate for non-recruited applicants, even though recruited athletes were less than 1% of the applicant pool. And still made up more than 10% of the admitted class. The same research concluded that athlete and legacy preferences materially skew admissions toward affluent white, you know, people who look like me, white applicants. Now pair that with newer research on elite sports recruiting. A 2025 paper found Ivy Plus universities offer many more regional and niche sports than public flagships, and that about 1 in 5 Ivy Plus athletes come from the top 1% of the income distribution. The paper specifically categorizes men's rowing, water polo, fencing, squash, skiing, gymnastics, and sailing as niche sports in this ecosystem. So when a teenager gets a giant admission boost because he's terrified— or excuse me, terrific at crew or water polo, let's stop pretending this is some pure meritocratic triumph. Most public schools do not offer these sports. My public high school in Charlotte, North Carolina didn't offer water polo or dressage horsing events. Okay, this is not the American dream. This is rich people camouflage. And please spare me the sanctimony. If your admissions edge depends on a sport that requires a boathouse, a country club, or or a parent who thinks summer is a verb—you do a Nantucket—that's not an achievement gap. This is a billing arrangement. We've somehow created a moral vocabulary where a kid from a normal public school is told to feel guilty about privilege while the kid who gets into Yale because he can row backward in matching spandex is presented as the rugged embodiment of excellence. This is not meritocracy. This is Downton Abbey with an SAT prep. The Yale report is useful because it admits the public's distrust is not random. Universities helped create it. They raised prices beyond reason, obscured how admissions really work, and wrapped the whole enterprise in moral vanity. Then they act shocked when regular Americans conclude that higher education looks less like a ladder and more like a gated community. And here's the sickest part. Millions of Americans still feel they have no choice but to participate. They know the game is rigged. They know the sticker price is absurd. They know the admissions process is full of loopholes, branding, and elite social signaling. And they still feel compelled to play because they fear being locked out of the networks that lead to power, income, and influence in America. This is why this story matters. It's not just about whether Yale's feelings are hurt. It's about whether we want a higher education system that educates people or one that certifies status for the already advantaged while pretending to be a public good. Right now, too much of the elite higher education smells like a library— or smells a lot less like a library and more like a luxury boutique with a nonprofit tax exemption. OK, again, I want to stress, I do endorse Scott Galloway's proposal, make all these elite universities expand by 1,000% or 10x their admissions. They could do it. Yeah, maybe some of the kids are online. Nothing wrong with that. If University of Phoenix can do it, Harvard or Yale can do it. And let's get rid of this whole idea that people have got to kill themselves or hire someone to pose in front of a rowboat and hire someone else to be that star athlete to get a good education. There's a lot of moral rot in higher education. Okay, so who am I? Who is this TJ character? Why are you listening to me or watching me? I spent 40 years coaching executives, people just like you, but also presidents of countries, prime ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners on how to have better communication skills and personal development. Habits. And now you can get the same training, but here's the catch. There is no catch. You can get a free course today. All you have to do is go to ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com, and you can download your free online communication skills course or your free good habits building course. Go ahead and do that right now, or at least right after the show. Ultimize.