I went to a university that thinks of itself as prestigious - though not a US one. The teaching and the course were a bucketful of shite. All it really had was decent libraries. There was the odd smart person, but they all did mostly research and were hardly involved in teaching.
Admittedly, I chose a stupid subject that I now know to be useless, but the university shuld have known that and not offered the course in the first place. It was a massive waste of my time. Fortunately for me our Government covered most of the fees - but that just makes it a waste of other peoples money.
The whole thing seemed largely to be a badging excercise for a bunch of posh cunts.
Magnum dong for scale.