Could Elite Colleges Expand?

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In the course of the podcast with Russ Roberts, Tyler Cowen says

I think that a Harvard/California could work. I believe normatively Harvard should do it. I see zero signs they are about to. It would mean a dilution of control, a lot of headaches, a lot of new legal issues. You know, some reputational risk. But you could increase the number of people getting into some version of Harvard by really quite a bit. And that would be a wonderful thing for the country. And the world.

This is during a long digression on whether elite colleges could expand by orders of magnitude.

Suppose Harvard set up branches around the country, thinking that it could use its brand name to expand to, say, 250,000 students. Think about how this would play out. Many more students could get into Harvard. Assuming that other elite schools did not expand, Harvard would become by far easier to get into than Princeton or maybe even Maryland. So I think you ruin the Harvard brand.

It seems to me that this is an example in which value depends on scarcity.

10 thoughts on “Could Elite Colleges Expand?”

  1. “It seems to me that this is an example in which value depends on scarcity.”

    Yep. And I’d say, ‘perceived value’. Because I don’t think there’s any good evidence that Harvard (or the other Ivies) offer greater added value. Harvard grads are very successful, of course, but that’s because of the selectivity the admissions committee, not the work of the teaching faculty. That being the case, there would be no benefit to society from Harvard expanding anyway. I’m not sure why this all seems to be slipping into the memory hole:

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/11/hoxby_vs_dale-k.html

    If you believe Kruger and Dale (which I tend to), Harvard provides no benefit for very smart kids over and above good state schools. If you believe their critics, maybe a Harvard education results in enough added lifetime income to justify the delta in tuition, but really nobody is claiming to have found a really large effect. So it’s mystifying to me why Tyler Cowen thinks Harvard offers uniquely high-quality instruction — let alone that such quality would be preserved in a massive expansion into satellite campuses.

    • One could argue (I would argue) that this warrants cutting all subsidies for students to go to prestigious schools. Why give one person a Bentley when you can give ten people Toyotas, if the substantive difference between the two is brand name?

      Publicly funded Harvard tuition is the same as giving away publicly funded Bentleys to provide a means of transportation.

  2. If you’re troubled about what education you might have missed from an Ivy League or other prestigious institution, just watch some of their online lectures. You then have to wonder why anyone would pay tens of thousands of dollars for it. Besides the impressive looking lecterns, you have to conclude that it’s definitely not the education itself that people are paying for.

    Even more fun is when an online Ivy League course involves student interaction. They’re wearing t-shirt, shorts, and sandals like everyone else and their comments are full of “likes” and “you knows”, with every statement ending with a question mark.

    If you’re going to spend that much money, at least dress like Perry Como and affect a transatlantic accent.

  3. You are correct. The people who get into Harvard are special, not the ones that come out.

  5. Perhaps more to the point – “elite” by definition can never be “expanded” past whatever the threshhold of elite is. So, there can never be more than 1% of the population in the top 1%. Copying top 1% behavoirs won’t change that fact.

  6. I think elite colleges would benefit by following the example of elite fashion houses. For years (decades even), many top fashion houses have sold cheaper labels alongside their expensive brand. Most fashion houses have many tiers: with the top tier being extremely expensive, but others being progressively less expensive (e.g.: Ralph Lauren, Polo, Chaps, Lauren or Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani, Armani Exchange, Collezione, Mani, Armani Jeans, etc.). If Harvard had their flagship campus that was still as selective but then opened a number of somewhat less-selective branches, that could expand their revenue without diminishing their brand.

    Admittedly, I don’t know how much students would benefit, since I don’t see any reason to think that Harvard is uniquely good at teaching (their teaching model seems to be the same as pretty much every other college; in fact, they might be worse, since they mostly just hire faculty who are good at research, probably at the expense of teaching). It’d be better if schools with genuinely unique teach models expanded (e.g. St. John’s College, Reed, Skidmore, Deep Springs).

  7. I think you are missing the point.

    The value of an elite college degree is that it is scarce.

    Issuing more devalues the degree.

  8. If you want another Deep Springs, you’ll need another eccentric billionaire to found it. And you’ve still only made it available to, what, 25 more students, for two years? Though I am having fun imagining a dairy farm in Wisconsin, or an orange grove in Florida, or a cranberry bog in Maine, all run by earnest young people with a sense of purpose.

    As for St. John’s, don’t they already have two locations?

    Finally, Harvard does have a lower-tier brand extension: Harvard Extension School. And I think most business schools are making money over the summers with Executive Education programs. But Harvard doesn’t seem to be very concerned with maximizing revenue; I admit if I were running an institution sitting on over $30 billion, revenue maximization might slip down my list of priorities a bit. To echo Octavian, I think Harvard should be ashamed to take taxpayer money for undergrad tuition.

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