[ben_w]

To the earlier version of your comment:

> Why would someone in Yemen have to go to UK to get a CS degree when they have multiple universities offering the same course.

Same reason they'd be using an American AI company instead of a cheaper one that e.g. runs on their phone.

[epolanski]

That's not an answer.

You are factually wrong, a Yemeni does not need to pay 100+ years of salary to get a CS degree, end of story.

Also, I've been a researcher and have few scientific papers published (you can search for my name on scholar: Enrico Polanski) and I've seen ZERO evidence that a student from Harvard or Imperial to be more knowledgeable than one in unnamed universities from the third world you've never heard about. None.

It's way too personal and student dependent. Plenty of people in ivy league famous colleges study to ace exams and don't remember shit few weeks later. Plenty of people in unnamed universities are genuinely curious.

Your college makes very little difference in how prepared you will be. Single teachers/courses may have an impact, but the location very little.

[ben_w]

> That's not an answer.

???

> You are factually wrong, a Yemeni does not need to pay 100+ years of salary to get a CS degree, end of story.

So far as I can tell, the like-for-like comparison is as per the other commenter you responded to: here's a fancy thing rich people in rich countries use, therefore the comparison is to a rich country's degree.

This is because you also don't need to pay 38.6 months of income to get access to an AI. Not even to access OpenAI's best. And even the downgrade after usage limits is not terrible.

Of course, if you don't like this comparison, then sure, I'd accept what you say. I'm disagreeing about the assumptions of what's comparable here.

> I've seen ZERO evidence that a student from Harvard or Imperial to be more knowledgeable than one in unnamed universities from the third world you've never heard about.

Mm. Tempted to agree even without looking you up: I'm British, so my reference point for "fancy university isn't automatically great" is half the British politicians.

OTOH, after I graduated, I did live in Cambridge (UK) for nearly a decade, and I do miss how incredibly densely packed it was with nerds, it's not something I found in other places.

[graemep]

The difference in quality is not the same. I have worked with graduates of universities from a middle income country (Sri Lanka) and they are pretty good. Plenty of them get jobs in western countries as developers. What they miss out on is not technical skills so much as international exposure to a more developed economy and culture.