This is assuming it's a problem that can be solved with simple tweaks or "startup disruption". It's an issue very much related to conspicuous consumption as education >in the Ivy League/cohort< is now a luxury good. Modeling a "prestige" factor helps account for the inequality [0].
Freakonomics[1] just did an episode on this, but I've come across similar data points else where. It's a stamp of not just a good education, but a social credential implying you have connections or money.
You can already get an equivalent education to one you might get at Harvard (or better in some majors) at many other public/private universities. The key here is the human connections you form, which go on to pay dividends later given the point above.
MOOCs were the golden child a decade ago, and they are working to some extent, but they're not breaking the elite walled garden of premier higher education.
[0] https://www.nber.org/papers/w29309
[1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-university-of-impossibl...
yes, and that's basically the crux of the problem. this is a social coordination problem, not a problem of education.
the trivial solution is to "outlaw" this by blinding the prestige credentials of the candidate (so only show a standardized thing like 3 year applied maths bsc) and only ask about previous experience (2 years working as data scientist) or whatever
"obviously" people will try to game this (though other universities can then copy what comes out of the fancy universities)
of course this could quickly lead to the rise of alternative prestige/reputation networks, but if the whole job application is standardized (so it becomes very hard to identify the candidate) then at least it gives a chance for folks to get in the door.
then only the usual biases remain, and the usual unfair questions (and typically the most disadvantaged candidates have the least chance to know about what kind of questions are discriminatory, and even if they know most of the time they don't have the time/energy to do anything about it)
Harvard knows it's whole mystique is based on elitism and the artificial scarcity it creates by denying people admission.
If you're an undergraduate at Oxford[0] or Cambridge[1] you can expect to have multiple weekly sessions where two or three students get a session with a professor or postgraduate to go through material that's been presented in lectures.
Does this scale? Based on my experiences (six years in total, three on each side of the table as it were) I very much doubt it.
[0] https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/student-life/e... [1] https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/courses/how-will-i...
The only thing that doesn't scale is on campus life, and that's meaningless to the degree that college is nominally about.
With respect, I don't believe that approach could work for the combination of the type of material covered and the type of (often open-ended) questions and discussions that resulted from it.
One of the questions I recall being asked to solve for a first-year Physics tutorial was "estimate the change in the length of the Earth's day if all the vehicles in the UK were to swap to driving on the right hand side of the road instead of on the left"
The social connections and the culture are the key parts of elite colleges. I don’t think you can scale that with online classes.