Is There a Goldilocks Answer to This?

Is there a goldilocks answer to this? I would say, as gate keepers to a certain kind of social elite, that one's ability to enter that world is determined at age 17. The united states is one of the few places where you have flexibility throughout the life course but not with regard to access to a leat education. On the other hand, i would say that the information and discoveries and insights that universities have take longer to permeate culture than would be ideal. It took behavior of economics as a way of understanding human decision making longer, perhaps, than it should have.