The Surprising Beginning of Modern, Selective Higher Education

Today, we feature the host of an amazing podcast called Gatecrashers, an eight-part series that tells the fascinating history of how the modern college admissions system (in fact, the entire notion of academically rigorous elite schools) that we know in America -- with its applications, essays, interviews, standardized tests, and US News lists -- all sprang from a surprising starting point: an effort to control how many Jews, and even what kind of Jews, were getting into the most prestigious schools. As the Supreme Court takes up a case that may end affirmative action in higher education, we couldn't have a more timely or important look at how we ended up with the modern higher education system. 

Mark Oppenheimer created and reported Gatecrashers and he’s a Senior Editor at Tablet. From 2010-2016 he wrote the Beliefs column about religion for The New York Times. He also hosts the Unorthodox podcast about Jewish life and culture. He’s also the author, most recently, of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood.