Crain's editorial: Opportunity for all Hoover Tower on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Some problems are obvious, and yet the solutions remain elusive — even when those solutions would lead to substantial social and economic benefits. Such is the case with a story we ran Feb. 22, by education reporter Amy Morona, headlined, "Ivory towers: How higher education is failing Black Americans in the Midwest." If you haven't read the piece, by all means do so. A one-sentence summary: "Black Americans in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, as well as the nation, remain underrepresented at our best colleges and overrepresented at some of our worst." And some numbers: In Cleveland, nearly half of city residents are Black, but Case Western Reserve University, the city's most selective college, reported only 6% of its population was made up of Black students in 2018. (At nearby public universities, the numbers were a little better — 8% at Kent State and about 15% at Cleveland State.) The situation is similar in Chicago and Detroit, two other markets explored in the analysis.