Oh yeah, I think it's totally fair - and they get the fastest runners (with respect to age and gender). That seems to be their aim.
My suggestion would be to lower by 5 min (and maybe clean up what some would see as discrepancies in the AGs) and keep the race open through the fall until it sells out. Certainly not suggesting they run with a smaller field.
Up until a few years ago, the race wouldn't fill until Jan-Feb before the race. If they were to tighten the standards, the race would probably sell out sometime around Chicago / NYC.
I know the RD has stated that he didn't like the fact that there is no longer the "I qualified" moment when crossing the finish line. For the less-than-five-minute group it's been a lot of uncertainty and false security.
I think this year caught a lot of people off-guard. The cut grew by almost a minute and a half. The general thought seems to have been that anything over 2 minutes was safe (I thought it would be zero). Well, now we know that was totally wrong.
Last time a sell-out caught everyone off-guard, they adjusted the times. It took a while, but the 2010 8-hour sellout for the 2011 race is what led to the current standards. Here's a good related article:
http://www.boston.com/...80B9EmzQP/story.html FWIW I'll be going back for my 7th (safely in the -20 group).