I do not know anything about Yale specifically, but I don't think it is reasonable to expect that every organization must grow all the time. A bakery, software

I do not know anything about Yale specifically, but I don't think it is reasonable to expect that every organization must grow all the time. A bakery, software org, or a factory may decline to grow even if they have "money and power" to do so. This is especially true for universities - there are a lot of them and they are mostly interchangeable, I have not seen a job listing which requires specifically Yale and nothing else. As an aside, I think that "acceptance rate keeps ticking downward" is not a good argument. Rate depends on applications submitted, whicb is not directly controlled by university. The real question is "what is the freshman class size".