[simonsarris]

> would be for people to wake up and realize ... nothing you couldn't have gotten elsewhere

The whole point of this song and dance with Harvard is that the education alone isn't the point of going to Harvard. You can probably learn most of what Harvard teaches from free sources online + youtube lectures.

An exclusive club grants you great networking potential, which is why people want to go, and why Harvard wants to keep strict control over who/how it lets people in. If they didn't exert Quality Control over the network, their primary selling point would be weakened. If you go to Harvard and pay full price with merely the intent of getting an education, you've totally missed the point and they probably don't want you.

Harvard knows this and is uncomfortable saying it out loud, and its also the reason for this ongoing mess.

(If Harvard truly believed that they were giving a world class education and that the education made all the difference and made the world a better place, they'd use their gobs of money to expand and teach more people. This would ruin the exclusivity.)