These ideas have a lot of following - that things are planned, intentional, designed to be that way. We might hear "why is that job worth so much money and that

These ideas have a lot of following - that things are planned, intentional, designed to be that way. We might hear "why is that job worth so much money and that one isn't?" or here "why Harvard, at all?". And this is worth countering. Society as a whole rarely plans "one more Harvard" - and when it tries, it rarely succeeds. Many people did work hard to make Harvard (or anything that exists now) into what it is now - while from society's point of view, it just happened. At some stage these are the fruit of a market economy: some people put in their effort and now Harvard is what it is. In that case ironically, "putting the top professors together in one school" is pretty universal. High prestige institutions are attractive - for their colleagues, pay, facilities, projects, etc. The good news for the US is that there are many such "top institutions".