Fairly cynical for Stanford’s dean. A few years back there was a related article in the Economist. In a normal supply/demand system when there is demand for a given commodity the rational thing to do would be for the supply to increase. Yet this is not what’s seen. A big part of it is the absolutely irrational perception of USNWR rankings, parent’s ego, the legacy system, etc. High prestige schools are getting their funding through other means than tuition, and that funding is often correlated to their ranking. So they have this perverse incentive to not increase the number of available seats and that will continue for the foreseeable future. The OP original article linked does have very good words of wisdom: there are other incredibly great opportunities for absolutely great education outside of these ultra-selective schools.