Philosophical-the future of B&M universities

[Merlin]

My personal take is that higher education in the US will go down one of two paths:

1. Some future administration will change the rules and create a government subsidized "free" college education system so anyone who wants to will be able to get a traditional 4-year degree at a public college or university. Schools will probably be forced to accept all applicants as part of that. Of course, the ivy leagues and other top private schools will still remain elite, independent, and expensive (even more so since they won't be getting any government money.)

2. Due to a lack of funding, most public colleges will close their doors, though some will move to online-only. The top private schools will remain open and will cater purely to those who can afford it. This will widen the gap between social strata and link "quality of education" to social status so "normal people" will with a college degree will have online educations and wealthy people will have B&M education from a top university.

What leads you to believe that #2 will happen?  Like has something like this happened before?  When has education become less attainable?  Why would it become so in the future?  Just curious, I can't see how this could happen.  Someone comes in to fill the gap, the market fixes this problem (and would have fixed it long ago if the government hadn't intervened in the first place - schools wouldn't have had all kinds of money to fund crazy if the government hadn't of guaranteed loans).

My perspective on this is based on the understanding that many public colleges depend very greatly on government funding and federal student grants & loans to survive. So if that funding were to disappear, chances seem high that many colleges would have to rethink how they operate (like selling real estate to downsize and/or moving more of their business online/remote) to remain solvent. Given that there is a lot of political pressure to defund programs like education and the arts, and leave this kind of thing to the states and individuals, it seems entirely reasonable that this could come to pass at some point. If it does, it also seems reasonable that the big name schools would probably be capable of weathering such a storm, but it would result in even higher education costs for their students.

Given the ivy league schools are already considered an elite destination for those in an upper socioeconomic stratum (and those who want to eventually end up there), I don't see that changing. In fact, I would expect them to become even more elite given a loss of federal grants and student loans would also mean fewer students could attend those schools since most wouldn't have the family resources to cover their education outright. Full-ride scholarships are already pretty rare, but if the costs of an ivy league education were to skyrocket even further, they would probably become even rarer.

Has anything like this happened before? I'm sure there are some parallels that can be drawn from history, but that isn't the basis of my perspective. Part of my job is being a bit of a futurist, so I tend to think a lot about how current trends line up against possibilities and draw conclusions from there. So, while I think it would be in our country's best interest that #1 occurs, there is a small voice in the back of my head that tells me #2 is more likely. Particularly given the current administration and how our policymakers are already starting to lean that way a bit. Also, if you look at futurist writings, there are others who have drawn similar parallels.

In any case, that is just my personal take.