>Again, this isn't helpful when it comes to actually learning the course material. If you want to do research, this is great. But I'm talking exclusively about the undergraduate educational experience.
Sure, but my original point was that the unique thing that Berkeley and other tippity-top schools offer are those quasi research-oriented classes. For "database security," you can learn the material well lots of places, and for some people a less prestigious university might be a much better environment. And, for sure, depending on the year or the subject, for a class like that you might get an adjunct lecturer who doesn't know the material well, an adjunct lecturer who knows the material phenomenally well and works in the field, a tenure-track/tenured professor who doesn't give a shit, or a tenure-track/tenured professor who does cutting-edge research in the area and cares a lot about teaching. It's a crapshoot.
But going to Berkeley gives you access to classes like "Qubits, Quantum Mechanics, and Computers" [1] that are offered almost nowhere else. Those classes can be extraordinarily hard, but extremely rewarding.
[1]: http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs191/sp12/ (not my field, so this is my guess at a representative example. For Berkeley, I think anything in the 19* range fits the bill.)