Regardless of your perspective, Harvard looks bad right now — and that’s good for America.

The resignation of Claudine Gay as president has brought the university unwanted attention for lacking both academic standards and moral clarity. She made mistakes, but in many ways Harvard set her up to fail.

Like all of America’s top universities, Harvard has taken on an unhealthy role in the U.S. economy and society. America’s best universities need to return to their original mission: producing academic excellence, not just signaling it.

These schools have used their reputations for excellence to form an oligopoly with outsized power. An Ivy League degree, or even just attendance at an Ivy League school, conveys a powerful signal that this person is among the smartest and best-connected this nation has to offer.

Signaling is a powerful economic idea.

When you enter an economic transaction, such as hiring a recent graduate, you don’t always have complete information.

Will they be smart, productive, collegial? How do you know? You look for certain signals.

There is a debate in economics about whether college has any economic value — does it teach valuable skills? — or is just a signal that this person had the discipline and maturity to sit through four years of........

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