I think that return of urban centers to places young people actually wanted to be has affected other schools as well. Like obviously not quite as dramatic an example as NYU/NYC, but I think part of Pitt’s increasing value perception out of state is also related to more kids wanting to be in cities, and then visiting and seeing Pittsburgh is now a quite fun city.
Of course as the article points out, we’re deep enough into this trend that now cities can be very expensive for young families (particularly once they are past the me and five roomates in a shoebox stage, they start looking for “good schools”, and so on). Again, obviously a lot less true of Pittsburgh than NYC, but nice family neighborhoods in cities like Pittsburgh are not as affordable as they once were.
And I can believe this is contributing to families being more cautious about cost. In fact, it definitely colors my own advice. If you and your family would need a lot more debt to go to a “higher-ranked” college, that could be money you wish you had back someday when your professional peers who chose otherwise are putting downpayments on houses.
On the third hand, as the article ALSO discusses, a large part of what has happened is simply that the “old” “elite” colleges did not expand to keep up with the increasing pool of competitive, well-prepared students. And so more and more such students had to go to other colleges. But at a fundamental level, those students themselves define a lot of what makes for an “elite” college–professors want to teach them, employers want to hire them, and they want to be around each other.
So I tend to think individual stories like Columbia aside, mostly this is not about the “old” “elite” losing status, so much as “new” “elites” moving up. In theory the leveling off of the US domestic HS student population could stabilize things, but at least until recently rising demand from competitive, well-prepared Internationals was compensating.
So we’ll see, but I think this will likely continue to be mostly about an increasing list of other colleges leveling up. Which is great for kids looking for colleges.