[disentanglement]

> For one thing, just admitting more people almost certainly decreases the access to quality education overall

Why would that be the case? There are many much larger universities all around the globe and also in the US that manage to provide quality education to their students.

To me, the statements that colleges make about their admission procedures always seem hypocritical to me. The colleges claim that the goal is to advance gender equality and provide education to underrepresented groups (which would not require a small student body) when their main goal seems to be in fact to create a small in-group of people who have made the right connections during their studies (which absolutely does require a small student body).

[ghaff]

Schools can be arbitrarily large I guess, e.g. some of the large state schools in the US. But private universities decide on their missions--which are often to have a smaller and more focused student body to your point. Making connections through my studies was mostly never a big deal but having a (somewhat) smaller school was. There are plenty of larger (and cheaper) universities if that's what you're looking for.