Much of the puffery and fluffery will be sucked out of the university system balloon as a result of this pandemic. When I was a kid, elite universities were where the rich kids and super nerds went to school and most of the rest attended state schools or small private schools with nary a thought about where that fit them into the larger scheme of things. The entire endeavor wasn't as laden with expectation and entitlement and high stakes the way it is in recent times. Nobody cared where you went to school once you had your first job. Nobody. And if they did, they were considered weird a$$holes.
The rich were less rich, the middle class actually held real power, not so many kids even attended college, so just going to college was a neat thing. It was solid but in no way made you anything more than ready to work in the real world. This was less than 40 years ago, BTW. The thought that one might pay to prepare for the SAT, or spend 50K-90K for one year of school, these would have been considered laughable, even for many upper middle class types. The pressures, the massive expense, the growth of universities as economic engines and centers of power, the diminishing of federal grants at the same time, these are all hand-in-hand escalations that have become insane.
If a result of the pandemic is massive deflation of upper education and realignment of the entire system to be more accessible, less inflationary, less powerful, less attached to elitism, less breathless in general, we'll all be better for it.