(Community Matters) Ivy league pedigrees aside, Austin beware.
What Richard Florida called “the mass relocation of highly skilled, highly educated and highly paid Americans to a relatively small number of metropolitan regions, and a corresponding exodus of the traditional lower and middle classes from these same places” is one of the striking social facts of the modern meritocratic era.
Austin and tribalism aside . . . as to Douthat’s major premise . . . I admit to unsuccessfully urging my siblings to send their children to elite secondary and higher ed schools in recognition of the increasing difficulty of living a life with access and privilege if you aren’t born into it. It’s unfair, some might say even despicable, but it is what it is for now, and while it is, who doesn’t want to ensure their children are at least competitively equipped to do well in life? As a kid whose parents sacrificed, laying the ground work for upward social/economic mobility, feels like a forward responsibility for the families’ next generation – as is our obligation to open up access and opportunity. It’s not just altruistic greater opportunity & access would serve us all best.
Community Matters 
This is true beyond schools. You see it in the business community where people prejudge others based on job titles and colleges attended decades before, etc… I do not think it changes much …. although there are more ways to gain access than in the past (which is a good thing)….but people are always cliquey