Not having a hierarchy of good and bad universities is a deliberate policy decision. Before ~1968 Germany had elite universities, like Göttingen, Tübingen and H

Not having a hierarchy of good and bad universities is a deliberate policy decision. Before ~1968 Germany had elite universities, like Göttingen, Tübingen and Heidelberg among others, equivalent to the position of HYPS or Oxbridge, with other excellent universities in the rank below, like Columbia and Cal Tech or LSE and Imperial. After 1968 there was a deliberate effort to make that irrelevant. Now there are good departments and there are better and worse universities but the range is so small that which university you went to isn’t worth mentioning. Germany is still a research powerhouse but it’s all about different branches of the Max Planck Institute, not universities. You think the US can deliberately reduce the funding and prestige of universities like that? They don’t even have a federal education system.