Cyol With Jeremy Ryan Slate Archive 1

About This Episode: In his newest book, 'The College Cartel', Sahaj Sharda is starting an essential debate about the monopolistic greed of the Ivy League colleges and other elite schools. ​​In recent years, elite colleges have been sued for price-fixing, sued for discrimination in admissions, and scandalized by Varsity Blues. Sahaj's book is both an exploration of these scandals and an analysis of the underlying force creating them: an artificial scarcity of elite seats. A graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, America's top-ranked high school, Sahaj noticed early on that plenty of intelligent students who can obviously handle the rigor at elite colleges are rejected every year. Having been an undergraduate student at Georgetown when the Varsity Blues scandal broke out, Sahaj further witnessed a fellow classmate's parents sentenced to jail. ​​Seeing these things, Sahaj was forced to question why. 'Why don't elite colleges want more students?' '​​Why do elite colleges refuse custo