alt Hacker NewsJm2c, but I really don't believe the "top educators" argument.
People keep mixing correlation with causation.
The reason why ivy league universities have generally stronger students is related to input: acceptance rates are lower and the weaker candidates are pre filtered.
Public universities around the world, obviously get a much wider variance in the student pool.
But that's about it.
There is strong evidence that ivy league students tend to be better on average.
There is _no_ evidence that this is related to the quality of education.
Hell, this is 2026 and that was true already decades ago.
You're not learning calculus or chemistry better at MIT than in an unknown university in Greece or Italy. You simply don't.
The overwhelming differentiator is the student, not the teacher. There's endless quality content and lectures online for the most diverse topics you can think of.
And, again, students in ivy league colleges are pre filtered for the most competitive ones.
And there's also another important factor: good scientists do not make necessarily good teachers. The two skills are unrelated.
And the better the scientist, the more their job is running the lab (fundraising) while delegating teaching to graduates and post docs.
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Obviously there is a selection effect that confounds any causal comparisons between those who do and do not get into MIT. But the better counterfactual is students who are accepted but do not attend. A diff-in-diff study with these two groups would be a better test. There are unique features of MIT: more money, elite network, etc. I do share your skepticism though - I've worked w/ MIT people before. I think they are very smart but also very lucky.
Yes and no, it depends on the program. I definitely agree when you get to choose your students it's a lot easier. But as far as course content, maybe not chemistry or calculus, but for capital-intense programs like robotics definitely. At CMU, there was a class students could take where each group gets to use a $15k humanoid robot (Aldebaran Nao) for the semester. When you take a class on super computing there, you get terminal access to a super computing cluster for your homework assignments. That's just not something you get at every school.
Moreover, when it comes to teaching load, some schools you have a course load of 4-5 classes each semester, maybe more; whereas at other schools you only have to teach 0-2 classes. There's a big difference in the amount of face time you get with a professor who has 300 students versus 30. Also there are big differences on whether a school can attract enough grad students for TAs, whether there are research opportunities for undergraduates, whether there are campus jobs for undergraduates, etc.
This isn’t just limited to ivy leagues, the same thing happens at state schools.
Many of my professors were from other countries. I literally wouldn’t have an education without immigrants.
Learning calculus is table stakes.
While you're almost certainly wrong about "not learning calculus or chemistry better at MIT than in an unknown university", learning happens outside the classroom just as much as within it. Students at random Italian University don't have a connection to people doing the most advanced research in the world. At MIT, that person is there and the people they are mentoring. You can work with those people and learn things that won't be taught in classrooms for at least a decade. That isn't happening at Podunk U.