In Part 1 of this series, I examined a recent report from Moody’s that predicted growing economic separation between a handful of the wealthiest universities and the rest of higher education. Media coverage of the report did not examine the consequences to either higher education or the American economy, should Moody’s prediction prove true, nor did the coverage assess the accuracy of the analysis, something that I sought to address.

In Part 2, I noted that extreme wealth in a handful of famous universities was not true historically, but is, instead, a relatively recent phenomenon.

Now, in Part 3, we look at the other side of the story: What does it mean to higher education in general that wealth is so unevenly and inequitably distributed across the 4,000-plus colleges and universities in this country? And why isn’t there greater concern about this extreme inequity on the part of the American public?

Well, one reason is that we Americans are a competitive lot. We love sports at least in part because they separate the champions from the also-rans. We love the story of Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet, or Steve Jobs because we applaud the heroes of the free market system. And, in the world of higher education, we love those institutions that have risen to the very top of the pecking order.

But we generally don’t love failure. We don’t love our sports teams when they disappoint us by not winning. We are less affected by the fall of corporate titans, since we don’t know them personally, but we certainly don’t admire them when their hubris topples them from their corporate thrones. And, in the world of higher education, we have become skeptical of the inherent value of institutions in the “second-tier” (code for not being wealthy), if only because they are not “first-tier” (that is, wealthy). It’s a variation of the old question, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”

For years, many universities and colleges vied to be seen as the next best thing to an Ivy League university. They tried to position themselves to be desirable to students who were almost good enough to be admitted to the Ivy League – but not quite. They reasoned that if they charged almost as much as an Ivy League school, they would be seen as almost as good.

That strategy has fallen apart of late, for several reasons:

1. Increasingly, in recent years, families have proved unwilling to pay very large sums for anything but an education at a nationally ranked and famous institution. They expect to pay much less at a second-tier college or university, not a little less.

2. While families in the so-called “one percent” have continued to see their wealth accumulate, the rest of the population has generally still not recovered from the Great Recession of 2008. Fewer families have the financial capacity to pay the published tuition prices at second-tier institutions – and they are increasingly wary of taking on even modest amounts of debt.

3. Higher education is overbuilt. In many parts of the country, because the number of high school graduates is falling, there are more college seats in total than there are students to fill them. As a result, a price war is under way among all but the wealthiest institutions – and the problem is that very few of these colleges and universities, because they lack large endowments, can afford to wage this price war. There is a real danger that, in their quest to enroll a full class, some colleges will overspend their financial aid budgets, damaging their financial stability, and potentially forcing them to close their doors. In the meantime, prospective students and their families, sensing a buyer’s market, are bargaining even harder for a still lower price.

4. The deck continues to be stacked against students in the lowest economic quartile. The high prices at many institutions discourage them from even applying. Lower-income families often find themselves in communities with underperforming schools, lessening the likelihood that their children will be accepted at highly selective (and wealthy) institutions that generally offer admission only to the most qualified applicants. Ironically, these are the very institutions that can (and do) meet full financial need of the students they admit – so high-achieving, low-income students who are admitted to such institutions can actually afford to attend them. The problem is that very few institutions have the financial capacity to meet full need, and thus there are effectively very few seats for even the highest achieving low-income students. Sadly, the price of the second-tier institutions is often still too high for these high-achieving, low-income students. As a consequence, they are commonly relegated to open admission institutions, such as community colleges, which they can afford, but at which they are overqualified.

Taking these four factors together, it is readily apparent that the trends in higher education we see under way today will not only continue, but also become more pronounced. That is, wealthy institutions will accumulate still more wealth, even as they raise their prices (and their exclusivity), and, in so doing, they will become even more attractive to the “one percent.” On the other hand, most colleges and universities will find themselves caught in the squeeze of rising costs on the one hand, and an inability (or unwillingness) of families to pay more than a fraction of what a quality education actually costs.

When families are faced with choosing among institutions of similar reputations that claim to offer the same education but at different prices, most will choose the college with the lowest price. As colleges attempt to meet the cost expectations of families, they will be forced to change the very things of which they are most proud: they will replace retiring full-time faculty with adjuncts; they will increase class sizes; they will eliminate low-enrolled majors that don’t pay for themselves; they will streamline the curriculum and minimize elective courses and options; they will put more courses (and programs) online. They will be forced to offer a lower quality educational experience as they endeavor to survive.

The “one percent” will continue to receive the best education money can buy. But most of the remaining 99 percent will receive an education that is increasingly inferior to that received by the one percent – and there will continue to be precious little social mobility between the huge underclass and the tiny aristocracy.

This outcome would be terrible for America and hugely ironic for a country that was founded on the notion that “all men are created equal,” and that emphatically rejected the notion of a monarchy and a ruling class. Moreover, we are, in effect, wagering that our country’s economic future will be assured because sufficient business leadership and innovation will somehow come from providing a high-quality education to less than three percent of our college students (that is, those attending the wealthiest 100 private colleges and universities). In numerical terms, we are putting all of our chips on fewer than 100,000 of the 3.1 million students who enter higher education each fall.

Not many people would argue that the path higher education is on will lead to good outcomes. So how do we find a better path?

Next time: Part 4: How Did We Get into This Mess in the First Place?

In Part 1 of this series, “It’s Good to Be the King,” I addressed a recent report from Moody’s Investors Services that predicted a growing separation of a relative handful of super-rich universities from the rest of higher education. I also considered the media coverage generated by the Moody’s report, and expressed my bewilderment that the report’s conclusions did not generate deeper analysis and greater concern.

Perhaps the reason that there was not more media attention and review was because Moody’s summation of the institutional wealth of the richest universities did not surprise many people. There is evidently a broad understanding – and perhaps even acceptance – that some universities have amassed significant wealth, and that the universities with the most recognizable names, and/or the strongest reputations, are often the wealthiest universities.

But what isn’t understood is that it hasn’t always been this way. Most of today’s wealthy universities have long had some financial advantage over other American colleges and universities – but the magnitude of that advantage, and its very recent history, may surprise many people.

Here are a few examples:

• Harvard’s endowment in 1994 was approximately $5 billion. In just 13 years, it grew to more than $35 billion – a 700 percent increase!

• Yale University had an endowment in 1950 of less than $200 million. By 1980, its endowment was still well short of $1 billion. Ten years later in 1990, its endowment was approximately $3 billion – but that figure jumped to $23 billion by 2007, an increase of more than 700 percent in 17 years.

• Duke University, with a current wealth figure of $11.4 billion, had an endowment of just $150 million in 1980. In other words, Duke’s wealth, in only 35 years, increased by 7600 percent!

• The percentage of Harvard’s operating budget paid for by endowment drawdown has increased from 18 percent in 1990 to 35 percent in 2014. Gifts added another nine percent. Only 20 percent of Harvard’s operating budget in 2014 came from tuition, fees, room and board.

• In its financial statement from 2014, Princeton lists income of $2,334,743,000 ($1,892,079,000 of which came from investment earnings, or 81 percent of all income), versus expenses of $1,233,982,000. The difference between Princeton’s income and expense (called “profit” in the world of commerce) was $1,100,761,000 – a margin of 47 percent. That’s not a bad rate of return for a nonprofit institution!

So the point is that most university endowments have grown at a rate far faster than the rate of inflation, or virtually any other metric that we might use for comparison. Universities that were somewhat ahead of the pack 20 or 30 years ago now find themselves with a commanding lead – and a lead that, at least among the wealthy private institutions, is only likely to grow wider in the coming years (as Moody’s notes).

In higher education, the front-runners include more than the 20 institutions listed by Moody’s. But even if we expand the list to the wealthiest 100 private colleges and universities, which, because of generous alumni, aggressive investment strategies, and a general desire to stay relatively small and very selective, have a growing reputation and a per-student financial advantage over the other private institutions and over virtually all of the public institutions. (The publics have been handicapped by significant reductions in state appropriations over the past 35 years or so, and by their large, and growing, size, which has the effect of diluting the number of dollars of endowment per student.)

The problem is that the 100 wealthiest institutions have a total enrollment capacity sufficient to accommodate less than three percent of the students who enter higher education each year. Collectively, they have fewer than 100,000 seats for freshmen, but over three million students begin college each year in this country. Moreover, in order to attract more students with the capacity to pay the list price, these wealthy institutions are increasingly turning to wealthy international students, leaving even fewer seats for American students. (Nearly one of every eight freshmen at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia, for example, is an international student – a 50 percent increase over the past 15 years.)

And the wealthier and more famous these colleges and universities become, the more desirable they are to those prospective students (and their parents) who desire the most prestigious education possible and a name on their diplomas that will be instantly recognizable, fame and status being useful proxies for quality.

As a consequence, it is now common for many of these rich and famous institutions to accept less than 10 percent (sometimes, less than five percent) of their applicants, the large majority of whom have outstanding high school records.

With such strong student demand, and with endowments that are growing much faster than the historic rate of growth of actual educational costs, these wealthy institutions are far more focused on keeping up with their peers (in terms of both price and the addition of campus amenities) than they are with keeping their costs under control, or their tuition affordable. Thus, we see such otherwise incongruous facts as, for example, Stanford’s choosing to increase tuition by 14 percent since 2010, even as its endowment climbed from $13.85 billion to $21.4 billion over the same five years.

In its most recent annual financial report, Stanford notes that the increase in the financial aid provided by the university in 2014 was smaller in percentage terms than the increase in tuition, making Stanford more expensive for the average student than in 2013. The report noted:

“[The increase in financial aid was] slightly less than the increase in tuition rates, and consistent with less need for aid, based on current economic conditions.”

So the economy is a bit stronger, and therefore students will pay more. Never mind that the university’s endowment increased by more than 50 percent in the last five years.

And Stanford is not alone. All of the other richest 10 private universities increased their tuition price last year, and none of them has ever reduced its tuition, even in years when it experienced a 20 percent return on its investments.

There is no immediate prospect that any of this will change. Each of these institutions pays close attention to the tuition and endowment of its peers and competitors, and each is determined to keep pace, in the belief that charging a lower price will be interpreted as delivering a lesser product. Even as the sticker prices for students exceed $60,000, about half of the students at these enormously wealthy universities do not qualify for institutional financial assistance – meaning that they (and their families) apparently have the capacity to pay $250,000 for their four-year degree. Since increasing numbers of students at the super-wealthy institutions are the sons and daughters of affluent overseas families, demand for a brand-name diploma (and the opportunity to mingle with wealthy students from all over the world) will, in all likelihood, continue to grow.

Why is any of this a bad thing? Well, it’s certainly not a bad thing for the institutions that are prospering in this environment. However, it places less affluent institutions under enormous stress, and it restricts social mobility. We will examine both of these issues in subsequent posts to this series.

Next week, Part 3: It’s Not a Good Thing to Be Other Than a King.