Not sure about the Ivy League stuff... But having been to Carnegie-Mellon and a state university, there is something to be said for the acceleration and being surrounded by peers, or being a research assistant with someone doing leading edge research. Compared to sitting in a class with people asking "Is that going to be on the test?" Been a few decades, maybe it's changed.
It's probably worse now.
I agree completely with what you've said, but there's another possibility as far as the students are concerned (leading edge researchers can be found at all the big state Unis).
It's this: how many of those hyper-prepped kids at the Ivies behave in essentially the same way (though perhaps they'll phrase the question less crassly)? How many are there to get a Prestige Certification (tm) and care little about the actual education? And what about the sense of entitlement that comes along with all this? From what I've observed around here and read, the current cutthroat system (and their parents in some cases) have conditioned kids to think this way.
Honestly, I even see some of these ideas sneaking in here:
Humanities degrees like English or history are relatively unimportant because jobs in those fields aren't as plentiful as jobs in engineering or science.
I don't use at work, and therefore it seems less important to study it.. This allows us as a society to ignore critically important ideas that help us make informed decisions, and we do this at our own risk.
