Which is exactly what I'd predict in a world where "Interest Surges in Top Colleges, While Struggling Ones Scrape for Applicants".
When the thing being sold is prestige, lower tier colleges don't actually have the product that's in demand. So they can charge basically nothing since they're selling nothing of value. That's not viable as a business (unless they lie to students who don't know better and pretend that they're selling prestige they don't have, "a degree will improve your life"). A lot of lower tier colleges fit this kind of con, the for-profit ones are explicitly this.
If they actually provided valuable education that'd be different, but they largely don't.
I think Lambda School style ISAs are the way for all but the top tier colleges. It means they have to actually be good at education.
Imagine the opportunity of actually being good at education and doing ISAs. It would mean your institution could do what Universities largely just pretend to do. You could make money from ISAs and aligned incentives/student success. You could also make money from companies as a recruiting agency if your students were actually guaranteed to be good. Your curriculum would be closely tied to what's needed and what's relevant.
You don't even have to give up the classics if you don't want to, they can just exist along side the other stuff (as they should). You just don't pretend they're hard or economically viable on their own.
Actual education is super powerful, it's just a diminutive part of what Universities have become and they're not very good at it.