<p>@GMTplus7: @kaarboer:
Yes, but the prestige-crazed won’t be as numerous and thus won’t go so much down the totem pole. As for exclusivity, some of them elites may keep that just purely with admissions, but expect changes. For example, if a university takes in 4 times as many students as now with the first 2 years spent learning through cheap (to deliver as well as tuition cost) MOOCs, and allow only the best quarter to continue on to be upperclassmen on the main campus (with the rest transfering to state schools that there are articulation agreements with), the university would be just as exclusive and tuition costs would be nearly halved. Actually, in this case, the university would probably work it out where half the campus begins on the main campus and half start with MOOCs (so 2/3rds the upperclassmen).
BTW, I think there is some leeway in terms of how many students universities can accept while remaining exclusive. For example, the U of Chicago has almost doubled its undergraduate size while dropping admit rates sharply and going up the rankings over the past 3 decades.
Do expect school sizes to change. Note that Amherst was once the 4th largest college in the US.
You folks should read Peter Turchin. We’re close to the end of a long secular cycle of intra-elite competition that will come to a head in the 2020’s. I expect the the US in the 2030’s to be unimaginably different from what it is today.</p>