The same holds true across the land, in all sectors of life, all the time. Boola Boola won't add extra zeroes to the paycheck for long. I've found that its famous guarded formula has counted for naught in over twenty years of blind taste tests conducted in marketing classes. Parents should draw the same parallel when investing in the costly intangible of their child's higher education and not be fooled by slick PR playing on sentiment.
B is for Big.
Big universities and colleges often hold classes in huge auditoriums which are not conducive to involvement or discussion. The labs that are supposed to provide the personal touch increasingly use TV monitors, augmented by foreign teaching assistants with poor English. The one exception is if the school has an honors program, where class size is considerably smaller. Having one available and getting your child into it is another thing. To return, colleges and universities must have students to exist, but bigger for the one spells smaller for the other.