Time has shown the predictions which political scientist Charles Murray made in his 2012 study Coming Apart to be prescient. The drive-by Ivy League and other elite universities not only to attract but also to make possible matriculation for the best and the brightest regardless of race, religion, or where in the United States one lived was honorable but also created a new elite.

No longer were the Harvards and Yales essentially schools for the Northeastern elite; they recruited actively from high schools in Wyoming, Arkansas, and Texas. That elite financial organizations, consulting firms, law firms and, for that matter, the Central Intelligence Agency, recruited disproportionately out of Ivy League schools simply compounded the new elite and the divisions between it and “fly-over country,” especially as many of those from outside centers of commerce and politics chose not to return to the towns from which they came. Throw into the mix not only the end of conscription in the wake of the Vietnam War but also the active hostility toward the military on university campuses culminating in the expulsion of ROTC programs from top universities and the ossification of the bubble was complete.