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If every college is excellent, none of them are.

I get that we should be raising standards across the board whenever possible. Education is extremely valuable and I'd like more people to be more educated. But there is always going to be a continuum of prestige, educational value, intelligence of students, etc. among various colleges.

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Success and life satisfaction (shouldn't be) zero sum.

Probably not. But there is always going to be a spectrum of variously qualified college students, and they are going to sort into a hierarchy of colleges. That will be true even if every college graduate has a life that would be considered "successful." Of course, success and satisfaction tend to be moving scales as well, and are often judged against peers. That's not about being zero sum. More education probably grows the pie. But only a limited number of people can go to the best colleges, unless you lower standards such that they are all mediocre.

I agree, but rankings are by their very nature zero sum.

If one person goes up, another goes down unless they are exactly equal. That level of equality is something I think impossible to achieve and even if we did, humans would find some other way to rank people.

But compared to the past, we can make it better. There is no reason why the 50th percentile today cannot be equal to the 60th percentile of yesteryear.

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