Top universities have abandoned their public service mission, instead acting like luxury brands that manufacture scarcity to increase their prestige and pricing power. They could educate many more qualified students but choose not to.

In an AI-driven world that values tangible skills, the traditional college model is increasingly irrelevant. Universities force students to borrow heavily for required courses that offer no career benefit. This system creates a massive debt burden for irrelevant knowledge, making skilled trade programs a more logical and profitable path.

Elite universities with massive endowments and shrinking acceptance rates are betraying their public service mission. By failing to expand enrollment, they function more like exclusive 'hedge funds offering classes' that manufacture scarcity to protect their brand prestige, rather than educational institutions aiming to maximize societal impact.

Fueled by rankings that reward selectivity, top universities operate like luxury brands (e.g., LVMH) rather than public servants. They intentionally limit freshman class sizes despite having massive endowments. This manufactured scarcity increases their prestige and rankings, creating an "upward death spiral" of exclusivity.

Top universities operate like luxury brands such as LVMH by creating artificial scarcity, rejecting the vast majority of applicants. This strategy boosts their perceived value, allowing them to charge exorbitant tuition at incredibly high margins, effectively transferring wealth from middle-class families to university endowments, faculty, and administrators.

Applications to flagship public universities are surging as families recognize they provide comparable career opportunities to elite private colleges at a much lower cost. This shift represents a market correction against the 'luxury good' pricing of overpriced private higher education.

Top universities with billion-dollar endowments should lose their tax-free status if they fail to grow enrollment. By artificially limiting admissions, they behave like exclusive luxury brands (e.g., "Birkin bags") that cater to the wealthy, rather than fulfilling their mission as engines of social mobility and public service.

Despite massive endowment growth, top universities like Harvard have kept freshman class sizes static for decades. This purposefully constrains supply, transforming higher education from a public service into a luxury good, where exclusivity is a feature, not a failure.

With rising job anxiety fueled by AI, fewer professionals are leaving jobs for a two-year MBA. This has led to tuition "deflation," with mid-tier universities offering discounts up to 50% to attract students, while top-10 schools maintain their premium pricing.