Does it matter? Either you believe that they are giving away "enough" of their money, or you don't. If it's "don't" then it's unlikely that lack of a relationship will sway you, and if you do, then you'd want the argument to come from someone with intimate relationships to Yale (as you could then argue from authority).
More interesting IMO, is the question of whether or not great professors can scale, and whether online can do it. Or whether the real value add for "elite" universities is their quality of education, and whether great professors are required for it.
My beliefs (totally unfounded), is that yes, "great" professors _can_ scale, because the mark of the "great" professor would be their ability to explain things in lecture.
This of course, ignores any personal attention you can glean, but for most undergrad courses you're not getting much of that anyways.
I guess another question is if great professors are only at Yale or Ivy league schools? Here's something to consider, maybe not everyone needs a great professor, or an elite education, perhaps there are a large number of people who could benefit from just a good college education without having gigantic debt after. Ivy league schools are sitting on nearly a trillion dollars in endowments half of that is enough to provide college for everyone who wants it. Maybe society would benefit more from everyone who wants college than a small number of elites getting ivy league degrees.
To respond in summary to all the posts - bfollis brought up a good point. I believe great professors do more than lecture. I can download the Feynman lectures (I believe they are still available), but I'll never be able to converse with him. But with a relationship with great professors you can. Or do some work in their lab. And that's the kind of thing that doesn't scale.
I don't think that great professors solely exist at prestigious schools, but there's definitely a greater density of them there. Just like FAANG has a greater density of competent programmers than competitors outside their tier.
I agree that not everyone needs a great professor. But, by definition, they are better. But yes, not everyone needs an elite education.
Ivy League schools have nowhere near a trillion dollars in endowment money. They have $1XX billion, I don't recall exactly how much.
I think that's all of the points, but I may have missed one.
I have listened to the Feynman lectures before, they are great for sure. But there are thousands of people haven't, and yet they still have benefited from a good college education.
If you want to figure out how to scale an elite Ivy league education, I think you cannot, I think the elite part is what trips you up. But if you want to see how to scale a good college education, you need look no further than the state university system, which for over 100 years has done exactly that. Unfortunately, the costs of that have gone up to the point that many young people are saddled with unmanageable debt. Some progressives, who are themselves the product of said elite education, talk about taxing billionaires and large corporations to pay for universal affordable college but somehow conveniently overlook the pile of money sitting in those endowment funds, far more than what those schools will ever need.
We should have universal affordable college for all that want it, billionaires and large corporations should contribute to that and so should the elite schools with outsized endowments. A good start would be to add a little tax to all those and increase the subsidies to state and community colleges.
And this comes from someone who is a product of said elite schools and was lucky enough to have it paid for. But not everyone is so lucky. I have also been lucky to have worked with young people who served their country and used those benefits to pay for college and, in my view, they are every bit as capable as anyone that attended an elite school.
More interesting IMO, is the question of whether or not great professors can scale, and whether online can do it. Or whether the real value add for "elite" universities is their quality of education, and whether great professors are required for it.
My beliefs (totally unfounded), is that yes, "great" professors _can_ scale, because the mark of the "great" professor would be their ability to explain things in lecture. This of course, ignores any personal attention you can glean, but for most undergrad courses you're not getting much of that anyways.