Reply to Scarcity of "elite college" slots in US relative to other countries

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So you want everyone to get in and nobody to have to pay full price, correct?[/quote]

Nah. Those schools could increase their supply 5x, keep their acceptance rates at 5%, and still get plenty of takers for "full pay".[/quote]

If T20 schools went from 1500 freshman/6K undergrads to 7500 freshman/30K undergrads, they would not be nearly as attractive.  There is not space to build more dorm, or at least not enough dorms, no room for classes or space for professor offices.  Harvard would just be a UMichigan but one without any infrastructure in place.  [/quote]

Baloney. They could absolutely do it and maintain their elite status. Severely restricting the number of slots is a deliberate choice. [/quote]

Please tell me where these people would live if 6000 freshman arrived at a campus that houses 1500. Or 30,000 showed up on a campus made for 7500.

The year that Virginia Tech overenrolled by 1000, they paid people to defer for a year and took over a hotel off campus to house the kids who came. There were long lines at dining halls, which made people late for class. People sitting in the aisles in lecture halls. [/quote]

And that is at a school with 30K undergrads.  They couldn't handle an extra 1K.  So how would a school designed for 6K expand to 30K, even with space it would be expensive and challenging. [/quote]

Colleges could actually fairly easily expand, but everyone would have to get used to a new way of looking at college.  VA Tech could easily say we will take another 1,000 students tomorrow and all classes will be on average about 3% larger.   Furthermore, they could say we don't see it as our mission to provide housing for everyone and truly make the room & board an independent decision to attend college (i.e., if live on campus it is X or just purchase some dining plan, or it's $0 and you figure it all out yourself).  Perhaps, they could indicate they plan to build more dorms, but that won't help anyone in the next several years.  Guarantee Freshman get housing, and everyone else is lottery/find your own/work as an RA or do something else that guarantees on-campus housing.

This is how international schools do it.  Perhaps VA Tech could not take this approach because they are in a remote location and there probably isn't enough housing in general.  However, UVA could take the approach that there is plenty of housing in Charlottesville.
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Increasing size has lots of implications.  It means more teachers and staff to maintain the same levels of support.  If applications decline, as they are forecast to do, it may mean downsizing again.  It also impacts other institutions.  Virginia Tech's growth has had ripple effects on other Virginia schools like James Madison, Radford, Longwood, etc.  [/quote]

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