[CWuestefeld]

This is consistent with the top-level response, about expense signaling quality.

Consider the quantity of people coming from outside the USA to study. It may be that foreigners looking for prestigious schools are searching in the USA because their own system is middling (except maybe for a flagship school?). Thus, they're also doing the damage to the USA's education market while not affecting their own domestic one.

[buran77]

> foreigners looking for prestigious schools are searching in the USA because their own system is middling

See how you called it "prestigious" not "expensive", and "middling" not "cheap"? Price contributes to the feeling of quality of any product but it's neither necessary nor sufficient. There's more than that just the price.

The US is an economic powerouse, it attracts top talent in every area or level because it offers opportunities and high rewards. Even the language is part of the cycle which fuels this talent attraction. This brings results, the results bring prestige, and the prestige brings in more talent.

An expensive school in Bulgaria will not attract that kind of talent because fewer people are attracted to living, working, or learning the local language there. Heck, even a no-name US school couldn't attract talent by jacking up prices.

[amluto]

> The US is an economic powerouse, it attracts top talent in every area or level because it offers opportunities and high rewards.

The US is an educational powerhouse, and we attract top talent, sometimes charge money to educate these visitors (undergraduate and graduate work quite differently), and then, wait for it, we kick the people we educated back out.

Seriously, check out the visa types linked from here:

https://educationusa.state.gov/foreign-institutions-and-gove...

I don’t know the history, but if I was in charge of a non-US country trying to import skills, maximize my country’s future success, and even slowly weaken the US, I would love these rules. If I were a US lawmaker, I would struggle to invent a more self-destructive, not to mention inhumane, policy.

So, in answer to your comment, no, our educational system is crap at retaining the top talent it attracts, because the US made it mostly illegal for that talent to stay here.