The Meritocratic Consensus and Stratification in Higher Education

Zachary Bleemer () and Jesse Rothstein

No 35650, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: American colleges and universities are highly stratified by pre-college academic achievement, family background, and institutional resources. We study the meritocratic consensus in American higher education: colleges that high-testing students (who are generally also from high-income families) attend spend dramatically more on instruction than do those that enroll lower-testing students. Stratification by test scores has been largely stable since the 1960s, but the stratification of instructional resources has risen sharply since 1970 at both private and public institutions. Non-academic admissions criteria like athletics, legacy, and affirmative action are second-order in determining the allocation of students to universities. Potential economic justifications for the positive association of instructional expenditures with student prior achievement—q-complementarity between achievement and resources, convex social returns to high human capital, and incentives to invest in learning prior to college—have little empirical support. Resource stratification across universities has not increased in the past decade, largely due to increased public funding of universities that enroll lower-testing students through financial aid programs like California's CalGrant, but stratification within institutions is now rising swiftly.

JEL-codes: I23 I24 N32 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
Note: DAE ED LS PE
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