Top colleges should stop treating admissions like a limited release beer - driving up prices with intentional shortages - and build some damn classrooms.
(1) Which has no impact on student learning (what nominally is what the undergrads are there for)
(2) And where there's a lot more academic malpractice at the elites. Most people don't get to be an MIT professor without cheating at least a little bit to get that extra edge.
Quality of faculty, which IS important, is identical until you get into really lower tiers.
> the academic quality of the average student
Indeed. So the question is to you want to segregate or integrate? Would the world be better off with all the smart kids and rich kids at one institution, and everyone else at another, or with everyone together? Remember at universities, kids can take different classes, so a freshman can take grad-level courses if they're so inclined.
Elite schools give you elite brand stamps and elite networks coming out. That's their key value-add. And it's totally worth it.
> class sizes
Ummm... No. Student:faculty ratios, usually. But a 4:1 faculty ratio with a 1:1 teaching load versus an 8:1 faculty ratio with a 2:2 teaching load leads to the same class size.
For the most part, elite schools don't have the best teaching. The best teaching happens at the more teaching-focused schools, unsurprisingly (which isn't the same as "small liberal arts..." which are mostly horrible).
Getting enough teaching staff and laboratory space is expensive and exponentially harder to manage. Plus you will need support such as cheap mass housing. Then on top of that, big mass transport.
It's not insurmountable, and quite a lot a chicken and egg problem.
The most important part is, what do you do with drop outs? Or with people who try and cannot find fit?
How do you handle people who have to quit for personal or family reasons, who suddenly now are concentrated on one place near the university?
