Gates branching out

Now he wants to get his hooks into higher ed.  Excerpt:
Critics fear that the focus on quickly pumping more students through the system could encourage colleges to water down requirements or turn away applicants who might struggle. Already some feel it has prompted community colleges to churn out too many graduates with short-term certificates that polish the colleges' completion numbers but offer dubious long-term value to students. Eventually, critics worry, the foundation's efforts to promote access and completion could actually increase social divisions by creating separate and unequal programs.
If philanthropic efforts like Gates's create public colleges that are just teaching to the job interview, the result could be "a better on-ramp for jobs but a worse one for real social mobility," says Robin Rogers, an associate professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, in an e-mail. Ms. Rogers, who is working on a book about the role of billionaire philanthropy in public policy, says "the leadership class of the United States could become one that students had to be born into or selected to be in"—through scholarships—"by the existing elite."