HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How U.S. News college rankings promote economic inequality on campus: Once ladders of social mobility, universities increasingly reinforce existing wealth, fueling a backlash that helped elect Donald Trump.

The lack of economic diversity extends far beyond the Ivy League, and now includes scores of private and public universities, according to the Equality of Opportunity Project, which used tax data to study campus economic trends from 2000 to 2011, the most recent years available. For instance, the University of Michigan enrolls just 16 percent of its student body from the bottom 60 percent of earners. Nearly 10 percent of its students are from the top 1 percent. . . .

Class-based anger was a driving factor in the 2016 presidential campaign, as white voters without college degrees vented their frustration by voting for Donald Trump in record numbers; it was the single best statistical predictor of a Trump voter. In the wake of Trump’s election, the majority of Republicans say colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, according to the latest polling by the Pew Research Center. Young people still see college as necessary to get a good job and move up in society. But the vast majority don’t believe the higher education system is helping them do that, according to a recent report by New America, a Washington-based think tank.

“Elite colleges are part of the apparatus that produces Trumpism and produces working class, white resentment,” said Walter Benn Michaels, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“It fits perfectly into Trump’s narrative … Basically, if you’re a low-income or working-class white student who works hard and you find out that what matters in admissions is who your daddy is, or what your race is, you’re completely left out,” said Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation. “When a politician like Donald Trump comes along and says the system is rigged, you’re very likely to believe that. In this case, it is rigged — against those students.”

Well, we need to do something about that. For starters, we can abolish the Ivy League. But the real answer is to take away higher education’s role as gatekeeper to the upper-middle and upper classes.

Plus: “If you could deliver the same quality at lower cost, you’d go down in the rankings.”

Related: Me: America’s New Class System.

Also: Abolish The Ivy League.