[bjourne]

I don't think this is completely true. Brand name universities might impress some people, just like brand name clothes does, but that doesn't mean the education is qualitatively better. Nowadays MIT puts its materials online so you can see for yourself what the fuzz is all about. And roughly the same material with the same "difficulty" was used by the professors at my university. Though, they are more "shy" (we in Europe are more modest) so they don't put their content online so I can't prove it. I think this whole "weak and strong universities" is mostly a US only thing.