Ivy League is not supposed to scale, it is supposed to be scarce. Its purpose is credentialing for differential social status. If an Ivy League education were w

Ivy League is not supposed to scale, it is supposed to be scarce. Its purpose is credentialing for differential social status. If an Ivy League education were widely accessible and no longer scarce, it would lose its value as a credential. And then the companies that hire only Ivy League grads would need to choose another indicator of pedigree. (Actually they are already starting to do this, by asking applicants what prep school they went to, a more reliable indicator of social pedigree than what university they went to.) I would consider this a highly desirable outcome, as it would help finalize the divorce between access to higher learning and social pedigree, putting the lie to the official fiction that we are living in a "meritocracy."