[ThrustVectoring]

IMO, the real problem with differences in educational opportunity is the knock-on effects in hiring decisions. If there were many more jobs that could not discriminate on college degree, then Affirmative Action doesn't matter (since the net present value of a college degree goes down). As a nice side-effect, a college education is often a positional good in hiring decisions, so we're often better off as a whole if we stop consuming it. (That is, instead of looking at 5 college graduates for a firefighting job, we look at 5 non-graduates, and we get to save 20 person-years of education costs)