I think there is a chicken and egg problem with this argument. The top universities were elitist before they were practitioners of affirmative action and now that the era of affirmative action is past, the top universities will continue to be elitist. Harvard is buying up huge chunks of Cambridge and Boston, which it can do in part because of favorable tax treatment, and it has a massive and growing endowment. But Harvard's incoming class sizes have remained flat as the US population has grown, making it even more selective and less productive (in graduates as a percentage of the population) than ever before. I doubt Harvard would even want to try to educate more people because that would puts its elite status at risk.
I think there is a chicken and egg problem with this argument. The top universities were elitist before they were practitioners of affirmative action and now that the era of affirmative action is past, the top universities will continue to be elitist. Harvard is buying up huge chunks of Cambridge and Boston, which it can do in part because of favorable tax treatment, and it has a massive and growing endowment. But Harvard's incoming class sizes have remained flat as the US population has grown, making it even more selective and less productive (in graduates as a percentage of the population) than ever before. I doubt Harvard would even want to try to educate more people because that would puts its elite status at risk.