Especially when the barrier to entry for a good college is getting lower and lower, and community colleges are getting better and better. The only thing holding up a lot of colleges now, is their low acceptance rate and their past prestige.

And their endowments... and tax payer subsidized student debt programs... and rich people paying $10m to skip the line... not sure I would characterize that as clinging to life support. I would say though, that it's a giant waste of money and an efficient market gives ZFs about how much money you wasted.

It will be an exponential decline once people start realizing that they are not as good as their prestige holds them to be. Once that happens their tax subsidies, student applications, bribes from wealthy families, etc will all go with it. What is the core product that an Ivy League level school is offering that makes people come there? Prestige, and I don't care what business your in, you will decline immensely once you lose what made you the best. ExpertsExchange and Netscape Navigator are just two examples (albeit wildly different market) of rapid decline when their bread and butter was not as good relative to their competition.

I promise you, unless these prestigious schools are able to vastly change their business model, they are going to decline heavily.

Colleges aren't good because of prestige or acceptance rates, they are good because they have good faculty. Everything else is a result of having sought after faculty.