For decades, activists and economists have urged America’s elite universities to expand their undergraduate enrollment. Yet the schools resisted, keeping class sizes artificially small to protect their prestige and climb college rankings. Now, thanks to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, some of these same institutions are finally serving more Americans — democratizing access to elite education and opening transformational opportunities to thousands of students who were previously shut out.
Over the last 30 years, U.S. college enrollment has surged, expanding opportunity and lifting productivity. But this dramatic growth in demand was never matched by elite universities. Their undergraduate class sizes have remained flat, or grown only marginally, even as applications doubled or tripled.
