Yes, but you have to be able to be a Minor Leaguer. You can’t play on the level of a high schooler and expect to last.
And you can’t stay in kollel if you can’t learn a daf gemara.
We don’t “cut” (to use a baseball term) anyone who doesn’t have “drive, determination, effort, perseverance and a genuine love and desire” to learn and tell them to go work. If we did, then we could reduce the number of slots needed and do better work with what remained. Instead, we allow them to linger, taking up the spot of the next Rav Pam. Therefore, we have to expand the Kollel and not miss out on “the next Rav Pam”.
The point of kollel is not produce the next Rav Pam, no more than the point of the Minor Leagues is to produce the next Derek Jeter. The point is to produce the next group of high-performing individuals who can “play” at the top level. A kollel should be deemed successful if it churns out qualified rabbanim even if none become a gadol of any stature, just as a minor league would be successful if it churned out major league players, even if they don’t go on to hit 500 home runs or win 250 games.
But adding more people is not going to bring you “the next Rav Pam.” If he exists, he is already learning in kollel. More slots may result in more qualified Rabbis, but it will never result in finding the “next Rav Pam.”
That was my point, nothing more.
The Wolf