[mattmaroon]

Also it depends on how you look at it. By some metrics of "best" there are clear leaders. For instance, if your goal in college is to land a job running a hedge fund afterwards, it's pretty clear you should get a Harvard MBA. The title and connections you get from there are far more important than any classes.

[eas]

Agreed. For good or ill, much of the (monetary) value of education is from what others think of it. You are totally right that if someone has a specific job like that mind, where the education is more a filtering and networking service than anything else, those odds (if you can really calculate them anymore, it's almost just pure recruiting stats at that point) get cut way down.

For those coveted private equity/VC/hedge fund jobs, if you can get in to the Harvard MBA program, you are probably getting pretty close to certain that HBS is the single best school for that (Stanford/Wharton may disagree), all else equal. The individual professors, classes, your learning style, what you actually learn, and any other individual preferences, almost wash away as non-factors in light of the credential. Good point. We may have to distinguish between an education and a degree though?

I probably should have been clearer on that as well--I was just narrowly focusing on the actual knowledge-gaining/learning aspect of education. Worth noting the other side though as we abstract away from pure learning.