Yup, selection effect bias. There was a long term study on this (sorry no link, I don't remember exact details, just that it was pretty solid, could have been famous Terman study [1] or something similar).
People who were admitted to elite universities but for whichever random reasons ended up not going there ended up being as successful as their cohort peers who did attend elite institutions. What mattered was "good enough for Ivy League" not Ivy League education itself.
... it would really suck if the pro-education policies if numerous countries were all based in a misunderstanding of why education is correlated with success. (To put it mildly.)
Pro-Education is different from pro-collehe, but yes.
And when there is only room for say 10% of the population to succeed , making 100% of the population meet today's arbitrary selection criteria will only serve to usher in new selection criteria.
People who were admitted to elite universities but for whichever random reasons ended up not going there ended up being as successful as their cohort peers who did attend elite institutions. What mattered was "good enough for Ivy League" not Ivy League education itself.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Studies_of_Genius