I think we're dealing with garden variety snobbery here. A great school, like a great teacher, is a school that makes a difference in people's lives. If it takes people who could have worked in a factory and gives them a leg up to a better living, then we should celebrate that kind of school. The point of the article is that circumstances have changed in a way that undermines the ability of school like WKU to deliver this kind of possibility.

I agree & the same is true for local colleges but most people are more concerned w/ the perception of prestige that their degree will grant them than the quality of the books in the university/college library that can expand their intellectual horizon.

Suppose that a school takes those people and fails to get half of them to graduation? Have they been given a leg up? Is that a "great" outcome?

Kyla Scanlon is speaking from personal experience. It can be a great school if you put in the effort. Will the market will reward that effort with a job? Maybe.

In my book a great school would likely have a low-ish acceptance rate. And so they could (even though they may not be happy about it) absorb some amount of declining applications by adjusting their acceptance bar. WKU's acceptance rate is like 95%. They're already taking ~everyone who applies. I question whether school quality truly plays no role at an institution which struggles to find a student they wouldn't admit.

A high acceptance rate isn't a problem. It represents distinct operational choices.

We've decided that a four-year degree is today's high-school diploma, so that means that you need to produce a lot of them. But you don't need a top tier research university to produce a stream of reasonably competent first-year teachers, engineers, feeders into medical and law programs, etc.

That can still be an excellent school. It doesn't have to deliver moonshots-- it has to serve its purpose.

Just because a school is highly selective doesn't mean that it produces a quality educational product or is serving the needs of its community. How many top schools are "selective" because they're mostly places for the children of the 1% to mingle before taking over Daddy's business? Are they going to be pushovers for grade inflation after asking for the cost of a condo for a semester's tuition?

If the mark of a great school were producing a lot of degrees, what would WKU's ~50% graduation rate mean?

Some people, when encountering a queue, will take the position at the end of the queue. They trust there wouldn’t be a queue if the reward weren’t worth the wait.

Why is rejecting prospective students something you expect a great school to do?

I would expect a great school to be appealing to potential students, and therefore attract a lot of them. I would also expect a great school to have high academic standards that not all applicants meet.

It's a good thing you told us all that otherwise we wouldn't know which schools were "good" & which ones were "bad".

I would say its the applicants who seem to know which ones are good.