No, because school prestige is a positional good. This is like saying you can address the shortage of Olympic gold medals by just manufacturing tons of them.
It’s not obvious this smallness serves any functional purpose. Two (U of T, Mcgill) Canadian schools have extremely good international reputations and serve more than the entire Ivy League. U of T alone educates more than the whole Ivy League.
But the point of school prestige, at least in tech, is to assess skill. If the available pool of raw talent is larger than can be funneled through prestigious schools, then there is a need for more schools.
But the point of Olympic medals is to assess skill. If the available pool of talented athletes is larger than the number of gold medals, then there is a need for more gold medals.
I think the point people are missing is that you don't need more gold medals. Rather, the people "hiring" athletes need to recognize that for many purposes the difference between gold and silver and bronze and first and second runner up to bronze is trivial and possibly arbitrary, especially in situations where outcomes are not nearly as easily quantified as in an athletic competition.
People don't go to these universities for prestige's sake, but for what prestige gets them. It's not really about the gold medal (for the vast majority), it's about being an elite athlete (i.e., being generally healthy and physically capable of impressive feats) and having the security to practice the discipline you love. Knowing that, you would build a network of schools that meet the full need of potential elite athletes, rather than rely on a handful of clubs and coaches. Which is exactly what we (and China, and the Soviet Union) did.
