The quality issue is
always the issue :) regardless of time or medium.
Certainly agreed that existing institutions (educational and otherwise) need to figure out how to effectively function remotely. Remote accessibility is a separate problem from scaling and reducing entry requirements - Harvard can (and likely will) have essentially the same students, just using Zoom rather than walking around campus.
And the point of my argument is that the main goal of admissions requirements and selectivity is in fact pedagogical (supporting an effective learning environment). Yes, there are branding/ego aspects, but again this is not a simple discrete 0/1 problem. The space is continuous, and "scale" is simply not the answer.
If your goal is making great knowledge readily available, then MIT OCW and many other existing MOOCs have really already solved that. They do it by simply putting it out there, but not formally evaluating/crediting participation. This is all great, and is I believe the right way to scale accessibility without diluting the focused experience of the institution itself.