If we're going to get anywhere with this tangent, I think we need to be very precise about the metrics we use to measure "education quality." Your suggestion was that there's a direct relation between students "clamoring to get in" to private schools, and those private schools being "better." Now, with the Toyota/BMW example, you seem to be shifting your argument to saying that anything people are willing to pay more for must be better. Those are very different arguments.

You're right that, at the higher end, private schools are probably turning away more applicants. But I don't think that demonstrates a relationship between that and quality of the education, especially if you factor in the cost of tuition (as most people would in any five or six figure spending decision.)

Of course it's the case that many private schools provide the best education that money can by, but it costs more money to buy that great education. I think being better in absolute terms (however you measure better) doesn't mean a lot without factoring in how much it costs to go there (obviously if your kid qualifies for scholarships or grants, that's a different story.)

I'll pick two schools I'm familiar with to use as examples. I work for a school in the "highly prestigious, private" category (Carnegie Mellon) and earned my own degrees from a school in the "somewhat prestigious, public" category (Penn State.) CMU tuition is $43k a year, while Penn State tuition is $15k for PA residents (3/4 of the stuent body) and $26k for non-PA residents -- we'll say, on average, $18k a year.*

So, some day, I'll have to decide where to send my kid(s) to college. Should I send them to the school I work at, or the one I graduated from?** Is CMU's extra prestige worth paying 150% more in tuition over Penn State? If you go for computer science, it might be -- CMU's comp. sci. program is superior to my alma mater's, so maybe a CMU CS degree puts you on the path to greatness in my field -- it certainly doesn't hurt.

On the other hand, say you enter as a CS grad and decide to switch to mechanical engineering. CMU's got a great ME program -- 11th in the country -- so you're still good. But Penn State's ME program is 16th. Are those five spots in the rankings (basically a rounding error) really worth $120,000 a year in additional tuition? Doesn't seem like it. If you just look at a generic CMU degree vs. a generic PSU degree, is there that much difference to an employer? I'm not sure -- I got a job here without a CMU degree, and many of my coworkers got jobs here with degrees from schools far down the prestige scale from CMU.

So, we can talk about whether there's something innately better about private vs. public universities, and we can talk about whether higher education is truly a "you get what you pay for" endeavor where the more expensive and more exclusive schools get you a better result (either in absolute terms or relative to the dollar spent on tuition) but I don't think we can debate all of those issues simultaneously -- there are too many variables in the equation to have a productive conversation.


* Tuition at a state school is partially offset by state funding, of course, but tuition at private schools is usually similarly offset by a much larger pool of scholarship money made available to applicants. I don't know that it's a complete wash, but I doubt it changes the equation that much.

** Actually, as an employee, I'd be able to send my kids to CMU for free, but unless they're way smarter than I am, they won't get in -- that damn private school selectivity!