In the fields of science and technology, universities with better facilities will be better places to study. There is no indication however that you would get a better legal (for example) education at Harvard than you would at any other university in the world. What you do get at Harvard is the chance to make excellent lifelong networking connections and the chance to joust with people of great acuity.
I’m afraid I disagree. The great law schools are great because of their faculties and guest lecturers. They can attract them because of their reputations, to the great benefit of their students. By going to a particular grad school, I was exposed to the ideas and legal thinking of some of the very best legal minds, who even today continue to have mahor influence on the law. And me, in a way that would not have happened if I’d gone to one of the lower tier law schools.
Okay. We can differ on this. 
Can you tell me one idea that you were exposed to ?
University serves a lot of different purposes for different people. If we were training the entire population to be world-class doctors, then clearly the USA is superior because we have John’s Hopkins and Harvard.
All the same, most of my family’s front-facing doctors were educated in China and India, and you know what? This is good enough. These aren’t even low tier American schools; they’re foreign schools.
If I’m looking to hire a new manufacturing engineer, I’m either going to pick someone who has 5 or more years of experience, at which point his or her university is now meaningless, or I’m going to hire a kid off the street who willing to take what my pay scale says I can pay him. That might mean a University of Michigan B.S. rather than an MIT Ph.D.
I’ve read on multiple occasions that the real value of an Ivory League degree is to network with other Ivory Leaguers. This might get you a cushy finance job in Manhattan right out the door, or guarantee placement in a famous hospital, but who the hell cares? Let those social classes mingle amongst themselves. That’s nothing to most of us.
Is the Ivory League comparable to the Ebony League? 
Another thing to think about in this comparison is the existence of for-profit colleges in the U.S. – I’m guessing that either they don’t exist at all in Canada, or they aren’t a major factor.
Generally speaking, most for-profit colleges don’t have a good reputation, and aren’t seen as providing a good education or substantially improved career prospects for their graduates. For-profit gradutates are more likely to borrow more to go to college, and are also more likely wind up defaulting on their student loans. And, many schools won’t consider any coursework done at a for-profit school to be transferrable.
Source: 20,000 More Reasons To Never Go To A For-Profit School
McGill’s price for students from other provinces is quite consistent with most schools in Canada; depending on province they all range between $5000 and $7500 CDN, which I think is a pretty decent deal for a proper education.
That’s what strikes me as fascinating. A well known school like McGill, UofT or UBC is scarcely more expensive than Lakehead or St. Thomas. You might not get into a tougher school because you were a so-so student, but no one says “I have to go to Brock instead of Queen’s because of the price.”
It’s interesting to review the list of endowments for Canadian universities (here) and then the American ones (here)
The top 5 in Canada have endowments ranging from 700M to 1.5B USD and then look at the US top 5 (25 to 38B USD). That’s simply shocking.
But as I said above, that’s largely true in the US, too: Private vs Public are very different, but within each group, prices are pretty stable and are not at all correlated to quality. Furthermore, a lot of private schools routinely offer need- and merit- based aid that takes their average cost of attendance down to around the same as the public schools. It’s less that our schools are more expensive and more that we’ve damn near perfected price-discrimination.
Undergraduate degrees don’t matter much except in certain specialized fields. If you’re taking courses with 100 other people, most of whom you’ll never see since the lectures are all online, one school is the same as another. You’re paying cash and putting in time to jump through hoops to say you are now employable.
Going into massive debt for an undergraduate degree really makes very little sense. It’s the giant con game played by baby boomers on Gen X and Millenials and whatever kids today are called.
Go wherever you can afford to go because nobody is going to care – at least in Canada.
Doing a PhD or a post-doc or other graduate degree is where universities really differ, and then again, it’s your topic that truly makes it. Then again, you’re being paid to do research at this level, and the endowments mean the difference between getting a grant or having to TA. So what you’re really looking for is a good boss/supervisor who will help you do interesting work and can open up doors to the next step of your career.
Well, yeah, but “within each group” is a hell of a distinction. That’s kind of the whole deal; Canada doesn’t have multiple groups.
Sure, but your original premise was that the lack of world-class universities and the relatively low cost of tuition were connected. But with Canadian universities, American Private universities, and American Public Universities, the perceived quality of the education seems unrelated to the cost of the education. This seems counter-intuitive, and makes me wonder if the two are connected at all.
As a counter example, England is rolling in World Class Universities per capita, and their education is relatively cheap. (Even for international students, Oxford tuition appears to be about $35k/year).
In general, the concept of “better” is rather subjective in the first place.
In terms of general higher education for the citizenry, as noted above, they’re about the same - yes, there are very expensive schools in the US but also lots of affordable options that aren’t “name brand” schools.
In terms of top end research institutions, the US has more, even on a per capita basis.
How much does that matter for undergraduate education? It’s unsatisfying, but the answer is it depends. Some are better than others but it’s not possible to generalize. Around the Houston area, you will find a fair number of employers who say the average Rice undergrad doesn’t necessary know more than people from other local universities but is often more prepared to pick up new skills or adapt to things they haven’t done before or be more generally on the ball. And how much is that on the university? If a university is selective, maybe it doesn’t do much more than identify the cream a bit earlier than employers do. Or maybe it does somehow impart some extra “something” through its curriculum.
It really depends.
There are ROI estimates out there. If income/debt is a primary factor, some schools and majors are better than others. And some of those expensive private schools can payoff in big ways, on average, over 10 or 20 years. As with nearly all things involving real people and life situations, YMMV.
It may not make a difference in the middle of the distribution but it can and does make a difference on the tails.
One huge factor is the quality of the available internships. Students at Rice have a much broader (and more lucrative) set of internships to chose from. This means they go into the job market with much higher skills. Employers may not pick the resume because of the school–they may see the internship–but the internship is a direct result of the school.
Is interest paid on student loans tax-deductable for Americans? It is for us.
Ok, let me ask - do people walk around with tshirts and have bumper stickers on there cars proclaiming loyalty to a Canadian college?
Do Canadian colleges have alumni organizations?
Do Canadian colleges have a school song?
Also how does one get “in” to a Canadian college? Is there the equivalent to the ACT or SAT test?
Do class credits transfer easily to other Canadian colleges?
How many international students are at Canadian colleges?
These questions don’t sound like you’re comparing for quality, just for tribalism.
If by that you mean football (but not soccer), that’s a point in their favor.
If you mean baseball, the NCAA defaults to the DH, so it’s STILL a point in their favor.
Yes, but what the hell does that have to do with quality of education? (I mainly see window stickers, not T-shirts or bumper stickers.)
Yes.
“I went to a great university! I heard that it did world-class research in my chosen field, but what I mainly cared about was that it had a rocking school song!!” – not said by anyone, ever.
How on earth do you imagine one gets admitted (no quotes necessary for “in”)? It’s based on grades, SAT scores, and anything else they may want to look at. In some cases, your record might even get you early acceptance to a top university while you were still slogging through your final year of high school, obviously conditional on graduating with decent grades.
Yes, but what the hell does that have to do with quality of education?
In general, lots, especially at top urban universities.
For sure.
Colleges provide several things:
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Credentials. A credential is a signal that you have what it takes to excel in a job. Today, an Ivy League degree is a better credential than a degree from a State U. However, I think this value is dropping rapidly due to grade inflation, corruption, etc.
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Actual Education. Aside from a credential, a University is supposed to actually teach you something worthwhile. At the undergrad level, this is going to be dominated by the abilities of the student, and by which faculty the student chooses. If you go to Harvard you are just as likely to have your undergrad calculus taught by a grad student as you are at Podunk U. And your success at it will have a lot more to do with your work ethic and ability than which school you went to.
In terms of education, another factor more important than where you go to school is what you take when you are there. Every college, including the Ivy Leagues, has useless faculties full of grade inflation and blow-off courses that can get you easy A’s so long as you don’t care about actually learning something. And some colleges may not be ranked very high overall, but in certain specialties are highly regarded. For example, if you want to study game theory and artificial intelligence, my old university (the University of Alberta) is extremely good. If you want to be a teacher, the university of Lethbridge (an otherwise little known university in a small city in Alberta) is one of the best. If you want to go to grad school, find the place doing the kind of research you want to do, and try to go there.
- Networking. This is where the Ivy League shines. If you want to work as a high-powered lawyer or financial analyst or you want to go into politics, you will be FAR better off with an Ivy League degree. This has nothing to do with the ability of the school to teach you, but with the ability to school to maintain a large network of high-powered alumni, and to populate their schools with the rich or the connected. You may get a job with your Harvard degree not because the degree says you are better than anyone else, but because it says you may know people who can help out the company you work for.
In technical fields like engineering, a Harvard or MIT degree will get you an interview, and maybe bias the interview slightly in your favor. But you still have to pass the interview, and once you are on the job, all that will matter is what you can do. So even if your Ivy League degree gets you into a major engineering firm, if you can’t do the job no one will care about your schooling. The lowest person on my team was an MIT grad, and one of our other team leads only had a 2-year diploma from a local college. I couldn’t have told you where 90% of our employees got their educations. No one cares once you’re in the door.
Google and a few other silicon valley firms don’t even require college degrees any more. They’ve been finding that at least in software, other characteristics matter more than where you went to school, or even IF you went to school. I concur with that. I’ve been interviewing people for jobs for decades, and I just don’t see much correlation between where you went to school, how much education you got, and how good you are as an employee. Some of our guys had Masters degrees, some only 2-year diplomas, and it still always came down to the individual and their work ethic, intelligence, conscientiousness, demeanor, ability to work with a team, etc.
Last thing: With the exception of a few fields like law and finance, the difference in value of a degree is likely not great enough to warrant paying much more for it. If there is a university in your city that is at least average in quality, if you can live at home while going there you are going to be way ahead of the game compared to someone who is racking up gigantic student loans to go out of state to a ‘prestigious’ university. I’d rather have a degree in history or philosophy from a state U with no student loans than one from Harvard and $200,000 in student loans when I get out. The second option could ruin your life, because jobs for history grads (even Harvard history grads) aren’t going to pay much, and that student loan will keep you from buying a house, maybe getting married, having kids, etc. Paying off a $200,000 student loan on a $50,000/yr salary is exceedingly painful.