Columbia University Ranking Scandal

From a business perspective, who is more intelligent, the person who pays $350,000 to get a degree from Harvard or Colombia (regardless of if they get grants or don't pay because of income levels), or if someone purposefully goes to something like in California public universities where residents can go to a local community college for 2 years to get the general education out of the way either for free (parents make less than about $40K/year) up costs to about $2000 or so for 2 years, then go to California State University where tuition is $11,500 for 2 years, and get a degree for about $13,000-ish for 4 years. Room and board - you can go to a university in your area for free if you live with parents. If not, there are many super inexpensive areas in California, believe it or not. You can get a share rentals for $400/month. Not the big metro areas, of course, but places like Bakersfield, Humbolt, Fresno, Stanislaus, Chico state universities.

Didn't someone who got a business degree for $13,000 show better business skills than someone who paid $350,000 for essentially the same exact thing? Same thing, because take macro-economics, for example. Let's get real. How much better is an macro-ecomics class going to be at Harvard than any other low-cost public university, or a community college? There's no way Harvard students in that class are going to learn that much more. A community college can even use the same exact textbook as Harvard for their students.

Getting a degree for the lowest amount possible should be the very first criteria to evaluate anyone you are going to hire, or person whose company a VC is going to fund. If someone pays $350,000 for a 4 year degree when they could have gone to a public university where the public pays for part of the educational costs, those $350,000 tuition people are not qualified for making business decisions. Stanford grads...good bye. Harvard or other ivy leagues...see ya.

Also, everyone knows you go to those schools for "contacts" so that's not an argument. I'm talking about when a business evaluates a prospective hire or a VC company funding a person, not "contacts".

What do you think? Is the person paying $350,000 for a business degree, or $13,000 for a business degree - which decision is a better business decision, given that two people are about the same in talent?