To your point, the biggest issue that I see is that elite schools are not growing physically to accept more students. When the eliteness is built on exclusivity versus the quality of the education/graduates that pits admissions of legacy versus new admits.
Its kind of like when Nokia used to sell the mobile phones with gold plating and the only way to get one was via an invite from an influencer. Basically creating the perception of value via false scarcity.
The first elite university school system that can physically expand to multiple campuses to accommodate new in person students and provide them with the exact same quality education and opportunities to network with legacy students will become Apple of collegiate education.
IMHO, the UC school system gets probably closest to this ideal.
The thing is, education doesn't scale infinitely like that. The bigger the class size the less attention you get from the professor, the less individualized the education is, the more generic it has to be, the lower the common denominator, etc.
And lots of colleges are known for their teachers. You can't always just hire another identical teacher: good ones are rare. At elite schools, they are often even famous and individually important in their field. You cannot scale that.
Sure, but when the US population grows by 10% (for example), Shouldn't there be a ~10% increase in elite teachers, allowing for elite colleges to expand hiring by 10%?
Hello I come from a country where a university education is free and the government will support your living costs while you are a student. In that setting, we have too many people in high school and not enough in vocational school (and the local high school is way more academically ambitious than American high school seems to be).
The way our societies & industries still function, too many highly educated people is not the end goal. There's still a long road to grow the percentage of "information workers", especially roles needing higher education, and frankly all that seems to mean is that you outsource all manufacturing to other countries -- I think we've seen lately that wasn't the greatest idea.
Its kind of like when Nokia used to sell the mobile phones with gold plating and the only way to get one was via an invite from an influencer. Basically creating the perception of value via false scarcity.
The first elite university school system that can physically expand to multiple campuses to accommodate new in person students and provide them with the exact same quality education and opportunities to network with legacy students will become Apple of collegiate education.
IMHO, the UC school system gets probably closest to this ideal.