Why Don’t Elite Colleges Under Attack Admit More Students?

Still from "Good Will Hunting" (1997)

There's a scene in Good Will Hunting where Will, the troubled genius from South Boston, schools a pompous graduate student about the stupidity of spending $150,000 on an education “you couldah got for a dollah fifty in late charges at the public library.” I’ll link to the clip at the end of this post so I don’t lose you immediately, but it’s one of the most memorable and satisfying scenes of the film. 

Released in 1997, the film reflected a time when, according to Gallup and Lumina Foundation polling, public confidence in higher education was pretty strong. By 2023-24, that confidence had fallen to 36%, before rebounding in 2025. During this same period, the acceptance rate at Harvard (the "Michael Bolton clone" from the bar scene must be a Harvard student, right?) fell from above 10% to under 4%. The university now accepts 1,970 students from 55,000+ applicants to an undergrad body of 7,300 students, a number that has effectively remained static since 1995.

When Good Will Hunting came out, the internet had about 70 million users globally. The recently founded startup Netflix was mailing people (including me) DVDs–wild to think about! Today, things are clearly different. More than 5 billion people use the internet. The physical capacity of Harvard Yard has not expanded, of course, but our digital capacities have. Yet many Ivy League and similarly competitive schools continue to educate the same number of students. Factor in a growing discontent that students are paying nearly six figures a year to be graded by professors who are themselves using the same $20/month AI subscriptions, and Will’s takedown sounds even more incisive. 

So in this edition of the newsletter I propose a little thought experiment: 

What if elite universities offered virtual undergraduate degrees to a modest cohort of students? 

As temporary responses to drastic policy moves, such programs could accomplish several things: 

1. Backfill income lost through funding cuts and tax changes 

2. Maintain access to international talent despite visa restrictions

3. Bolster eroding institutional reputations in underserved American regions

4. Extend prestigious education beyond coastal enclaves, while maintaining exclusivity 

Below I explore how the smallest possible expansion could mitigate the large crises currently unfolding in higher education. In the spirit of Good Will Hunting, I’m going to single out Harvard a bit, but the question applies to any of the schools targeted by funding cuts, visa constraints, or additional tax liabilities. Read on! 

The Mathematics of Rejection

Anyone who’s recently been through the gauntlet of college admissions, whether as a parent, counselor, or student, will tell you it’s a cruel game. I am constantly floored by the drive, maturity, and sheer cognitive talent of the teenagers I work with as an education consultant. 

They have their work cut out for them. These young people are expected to accomplish a lifetime's worth of achievements–perfect grades, published research, extensive volunteering impact–all before they apply to college. And even when they make good on these often impossible expectations, most of them will still not get into their top choice college. David Brooks, writing in The New York Times, captured a bit of the zeitgeist when he quoted Williams College senior David Wignall: 

“We are the most rejected generation.” 

Consider the evolution of admission rates at “highly selective” colleges, which typically means they accept 20% or fewer of their applicants. In just the past two decades, the number of students applying to the 67 most selective colleges (with an average admissions rate of 11%) has tripled to nearly 2 million a year while the number of seats available remained unchanged. In 1959, about half of American college applicants applied to just one school. Today, your average high school student applies to 7, and many apply to 10, 20, even 30 in the hopes that there will be one or two competitive schools that won’t reject them.

The psychological toll has been profound. I’ve written elsewhere about the crisis of mental health in GenZ, much of it driven by pervasive academic pressures and social media. Many students are choosing more stable, self-determined alternatives, forgoing college altogether to enter the trades right out of high school, or choosing paths that minimize the number of rejections ahead. Speaking with Brooks, Wignall observed that the culture of rejection also intensifies early specialization; you’d better master a sport, musical instrument, or coding language by age 14 if you want to stand out when the culling begins. 

In a study I previously published at the academic mentorship program Polygence, we analyzed a trove of internal admissions data released by Harvard in the Students for Fair Admissions lawsuit that proved as much. That data also confirmed that many of the university’s applicants are more than academically qualified enough to attend. An admissions system that sifts through piles of valedictorians with perfect GPAs for some “distinguishing excellences” has helped to transform childhood into a protracted audition for acceptance letters. Those who are rejected (i.e. the overwhelming majority) do not lack the credentials to succeed in this meritocracy; they’re rejected, at least facially, due to insufficient classroom space. 

The Economics of Prestige

For most students, the name on the sweatshirt does carry social cache, but practically speaking, the reason to go to a selective college is economic. Simply put, admission to an Ivy League+ school is a proven path for financial success. They carry enormous potential for socioeconomic mobility—something approaching the fabled “American Dream” where, through grit and determination, poor kids can elevate their station—which is why elite schools often offer full tuition coverage for lower income families. This year, Harvard even plans to expand that scholarship offering to families making under $200,000 annually. (It’s worth noting that with an endowment of $53 billion, Harvard could comfortably afford to offer free tuition to all, but research has shown that could paradoxically erode acceptance for lower-income students as competition from more monied applicants increases.)

Yet it’s also true that prestigious institutions are least as good at consolidating wealth and power amongst the current elite as they are at providing a ladder to the less fortunate. According to economist Raj Chetty’s research with Opportunity Insights, at elite schools like Dartmouth College, children from the top 1% of the income bracket are 12.4x more likely to be accepted than equally qualified applicants from less wealthy families.

From the outside looking in, it’s easy to see why some people malign these schools as exclusive clubs where the rich get richer. Students who attend Ivy League schools enjoy median earnings 60% higher than the national average by age 34; the lifetime earnings premium for a Harvard degree has been estimated at $1.2 million compared to a state school graduate. And thanks in part to loyal alumni giving practices at these schools, swelling endowments amount to 5, 6, or 7 million dollars per enrolled student. And this concentrated wealth—both institutional and individual—has not gone unnoticed in Washington.

The Trump administration’s new higher ed tax regime explicitly targets this educational aristocracy. The “One Big, Beautiful Bill” raises the endowment tax rate from 1.4% to 8% for the wealthiest private colleges and universities where endowment dollars per student exceeds $2 million. Harvard faces the largest new bill of $266 million. The administration has framed this as dismantling “hedge funds with universities attached,” forcing those that have accumulated vast wealth through artificial scarcity to contribute more to federal coffers. A more cynical take that emerges from the seemingly haphazard application of these tax burdens: if a school is too “woke” (read “Liberal”), they decide to hit them where it hurts. 

Most commentators, from economists to corporate leaders, see this and the accompanying policies that have gutted education funding for what they are: a devastating self-inflicted wound to research, innovation, and economic growth motivated by ideology. And while Harvard initially put up a valiant resistance, it and other schools are beginning to cave, making concessions that damage their bottom lines, their communities, and their brands.

Stanford announced $140 million in budget cuts and laid off 363 staff members, including employees with decades of service, some of whom I worked with during my tenure in a research lab there. Harvard spent early 2025 doing heavy lobbying with Congress, begging them to reduce the new levies. Even without looking at the balance sheets of these universities, though, we know their business models rely on tuition for cashflows, so it sure seems like many are choosing to fire janitors and administrative staff instead of turning on a revenue stream for which there is ample demand: admitting more students. 

The Modest Proposal

Enter my promised thought experiment: What if Harvard, instead of accepting only 3.6% of applicants, chose to accept 6%? Not 36%, not 16%, just 6%—still rejecting 94% of qualified candidates but opening virtual doors to an additional, say, 3,000 students each year.

These students would attend Harvard virtually, paying somewhere around $30,000 annually—about 35% of the on-campus cost. (I did a little work pricing out appropriate reductions; your mileage could vary.) They would receive the same Harvard College degree, taught by the same faculty, with the same requirements. Annual revenue from 3,000 virtual students at $30,000 each would be $90 million, or $270 million over the years remaining in the current political order (assuming it does end three years from now). 

There will be some who argue in good faith that grafting online students into historically in-person classes is a nonstarter. It will dilute the value of the degree for in-person students or excise the social and networking benefits that students expect to receive on campus. I hear you. Having cut my teeth in experiential education, leading students from the forests of California to the museums of France, I appreciate those arguments, and agree with many of them. As someone with a PhD in art history, I believe not only in the power of in-person discussion to grapple with difficult ideas and differences of opinion, but also in the meaningful aspects of physical presence that cannot be replicated through a screen. 

And yet just last week a Boston Globe report quoted professors from Harvard itself that students “are so overscheduled with extracurriculars that they don’t attend class.” Other anecdotes about the motivations to attend elite institutions seem to point to why their students find those in-person, non-class activities to the best use of their time: “It’s the best place to meet your co-founder and your wife,” one unabashed Columbia undergrad explained a widely-circulated New York Magazine article on AI use in college. 

Since universities know their own residential students skip the actual education for the networking, then they’ve also conceded that classroom instruction can be unbundled from the social experience. And if they believe, as COVID-era actions proved, that faculty can deliver high-quality education remotely, then the refusal to offer virtual degrees to even 3,000 additional students becomes less defensible. Online education is obviously different, but we still recognize it as viable. 

Moreover, remote learning increasingly reflects the realities of work in the 21st century. We nearly all do some part of our work online, and many knowledge workers do nearly all of it there. Meanwhile, prestigious institutions from Stanford to Georgetown have in recent years expanded online offerings of both certificate programs and credit-bearing courses catering to everyone from retirees to high school students. 

An example of successful online expansion is Georgia Tech’s Master of Science in Computer Science. The program charges $7,000 total—not annually, but for the entire degree. It has enrolled over 14,000 students while maintaining the same admission standards as its residential program, suggesting a false choice between quality and access. Employment data backs this up: online graduates earned nearly identical median starting salaries (~$140,000) as on-campus graduates. 

While schools like Harvard have historically posted slim, single digit operating margins, division-level contributions from Harvard Extension School are typically much better—let’s cautiously assume 20-30%. This would make additional course-level enrollments through existing online capacity a significant net contributor to the university’s bottom line at a time when it seems like they need it. 

Hypothetical net revenue from three years of online classes for 3,000 extra undergrads around $100 million. This could offset the new endowment tax while expanding access by 2/3rds. And Harvard could still reject 94% of applicants, keeping the university’s aristocratic character intact. Conceding the downsides, what other additional upsides would you need to explore this course of action?

Shoring up the Brand

One clear added benefit of virtual expansion: bolstering your institution’s brand with demographics most critical of it. 

Recent national surveys confirm a dramatic partisan divide in perceptions of elite universities like Harvard. The gap between parties represents the widest in the history of higher education polling: Pew’s 2019 report found that Republican confidence in colleges fell to 33% versus 62% for Democrats, and more recent Gallup data reinforces this trend for elite private universities. Meanwhile, 68% of Americans—including majorities from both major parties—agree that top universities “care more about their reputation than their students.” I don’t need to lean on my experience in education branding and product marketing to know those are bad numbers. 

As my colleague and brand leader James Hurst, Creative Director at ZAG, writes in his book Use Design to Design Change, 

“the most successful brands transcend the transaction; they become symbols of shared values and common aspirations.” 

In normal times, Harvard and its ilk may not have seen an urgent need to expand their brands by taking chances. But as the policy actions this year have shown, US colleges today are not operating in “normal times.” 

McKinsey & Company research indicates that “purposeful brand expansion”—maintaining core values while reaching new audiences—can increase brand value by an average significantly. And my strategy research at Didametic is based on the principle that organizations that demonstrate values through action rather than words increase brand loyalty several times over while expanding their addressable market. 

To their credit, many of the targeted institutions are fighting valiantly through a terrible situation. Higher education’s resistance to Trump administration pressure has indeed strengthened its position among educated professionals. Legal challenges to visa restrictions and research funding cuts have improved what consultants call “courage scores” among college-educated adults. But among non-college-educated Americans (the majority of the country) these same actions have deepened perceptions of Harvard as an institution that fights harder for the status quo than for sharing its largesse. 

Fortunately, there are plenty of foils to use as comparison. Take Arizona State University, with a ~90% acceptance rate and 65,000 online students. It’s been ranked #1 for innovation by U.S. News & World report for ten consecutive years. Harvard ranks #17 on their list (though, granted, it still tops charts in other measures like patents and citations). The university’s charter rings like an implicit foil to highly rejective counterparts: “ASU is a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed…” 

Reframing the Geography of Exclusion

Expanding access to elite colleges virtually could produce significant political and social benefits, as geographic representation at Harvard and similar institutions is currently highly concentrated. According to Harvard’s official reporting, 17% of the entering class comes from New England and 20% from the Mid-Atlantic, with additional large cohorts from the Pacific and South. State-level studies show that about 69% of Harvard’s undergraduates come from outside Massachusetts, but a disproportionate share are still clustered in a handful of high-population states including California, New York, Texas, and others.

For context, Massachusetts, home to roughly 2% of the U.S. population, accounts for over 15% of Harvard’s domestic enrollees. Meanwhile, regions such as the Mountain West and Central states, representing a substantial portion of the national population, collectively contribute less than 5% of the student body.

The practical effect is that, as of 2024, well over half the country (and much of rural and small-town America) remains statistically underrepresented at Harvard, regardless of academic qualification. If virtual expansion elevated annual admits from underrepresented states from around 500 to 1,000 per year, thousands more families would forge direct connections to Harvard without leaving their communities—a step that, multiplied by social networks, could meaningfully change perceptions of elite education across a much broader swath of the country.

Maintaining International Pipelines

Of course, part of the challenge in the years ahead will be offsetting lost tuition not from domestic students but from international ones. The Trump administration’s decision to revoke Harvard’s certification to host international students affects over 6,800 students who contribute $180 million annually in direct tuition. According to Boston Regional Economic Models Inc., an additional $97 million to the local economy. Harvard’s response was to dramatically increase waitlist activity, what one admissions officer described off-record as scrambling to fill seats with lower-revenue domestic students. 

The National Association of Foreign Student Advisors (NAFSA) anticipates new visa restrictions could decrease international student enrollment by 30-40% beginning this year, or about 150,000 fewer students in US colleges. Put aside the overall dent in national economic growth that reduction will bring; affected colleges must look at this from an internal financial perspective. And virtual expansion, even for a few years, could be a solid long-term investment to address this situation. This is because, based on current admissions policies, international students are just more valuable–3 times more, to be exact–on a per student basis than domestic ones. For instance, the average international student generates $59,000-$87,000 annually in net revenue for Harvard. Domestic students, after aid, generate $20,000-$32,000. 

Meanwhile, the best minds from other countries are already beginning to look to other locales for their education. Many of those students may go to countries that invest in research and development, particularly in the growing fields of AI, energy, and climate tech. Maintaining those pipelines for international talent through a virtual offering, even if temporary, could be a good way to ensure the connections haven’t evaporated when the political calculus changes. 

Virtual cohorts could receive many of the privileges afforded to in-person undergrads. Tried and true measures like in-person ceremonies and short, high-residency programs at key educational milestones could create meaningful connections with their cohorts, a connection to coveted campus environments, and a workaround to visa concerns. This solution requires no new construction, no student relocation, no lowering of standards, while helping to mitigate the pernicious effects of the most damaging policy changes. 

Conclusion

I'll conclude by repeating that this is a thought experiment, not a deeply held policy position I’m proposing. It is, however, an attempt, underwritten by some basic accounting, to find ways to adapt to drastic changes to higher ed operations quickly and effectively. And history shows crises have a way of revealing not just an opportunity for change, but also generating the will to follow through on it.

While still privileged, elite US colleges do face tough choices shaped by both necessity and opportunity. They can continue embracing scarcity in an age of digital abundance, but given their current peril, certain shibboleths may be worth toppling. They already possess the faculty, technology, and infrastructure capacity, and they have the mission statements about advancing knowledge and serving society. And as the attacks on their current way of doing things continue, the gap between capability and implementation continues to shrink. 

Will was right about the library card. But now that libraries are digital, the reading room’s capacity is infinite. Certain schools could easily decide to let a few more people in, even if only virtually.

Here’s the link to that bar scene from the movie :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z8pQds_GwQ&t=187s

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