You're kind of ignoring the thesis of the article.

This article is specifically NOT about hard schools (caltech, MIT) in fact it calls them out as counter-examples. This article is targeting prestigious, easy schools that do grade-inflation (e.g. Harvard). It is specifically accusing the easy-to-pass hard-to-get-in schools of being a mere status symbol, in turn the wider population of being silly for taking that symbol so seriously.