In isolated instances, that might be so, but in STEM? I frankly do NOT believe that. I do not believe it because I went to a little no-name directional college, and have close friends who went to top-25 colleges for the same course of study.
They were, if anything, hampered in graduate studies by a lack of hands-on experience with instrumentation, at least those who came from institutions with state of the art equipment being run exclusively by post-docs, professional technicians, and graduate students. Their theoretical knowledge was absolutely no different than mine.
Also-- if this WERE true, then the textbooks used in those "elite" courses would differ significantly. They most certainly do not.
Finally, my peers and I, graduating in a class of fewer than 10, were accepted into some of the most elite graduate programs anywhere in the world, and were highly successful in those programs, no less. So if our undergraduate degrees were so second-rate, someone should definitely let places like CalTech, Berkeley, and MIT know. LOL!
Is it true in the humanities? I have no idea, but it would explain a few things to me if it were, I suppose. Now, if you're comparing a not-quite-mediocre graduate program to a top-5 undergraduate one, then I might well believe that the material covered in a 300-level undergrad course was more or less equivalent...
but honestly, a lot of this kind of discussion strikes me as rationalization based on sticker pricing.
Different corporations have different recruiting policies. Those policies change with some regularity. Even within large companies, those recruiting policies may not be monolithic. For example, one high-tech employer that I know of LOVES to hire Stanford grads-- in California. In their other sites worldwide, those degrees carry far less weight... they basically tend to hire locally.
In contrast, a smaller (also high-tech) company in the region refuses to hire Stanford grads at all.
{shrug} I think it's kind of a wash, personally. If you have an HR that idolizes elite colleges, it gives you an edge to have a degree from one. If you have an HR director who has a bias against them on the basis of anti-elitism, though, it will actually hurt you, but maybe you don't care since who wants to work there anyway, right?
