Many students choose completely useless programs (straight to unemployment), students don't fell entitled to criticize anything, and of course the universities don't treat them like paying customers.
the alternative is to stop having the government directly subsidize higher education through grants and loans. instead let taxpayers keep that money and fund schools themselves. do you know how the ivy leagues got to be the ivy leagues? by raising prices until demand and supply met instead of artificially low prices and quotas^1.
the best plan would be to raise prices until demand is slightly lower than supply so that you have room for poor merit students.
1. colleges were quite a bit different before WW2. that's when public funding of university research really took off, due to military interest.