Indeed, and I'd say that the quality of learning at the prestigious institutions is not much different from the less prestigious ones. Mostly their prestige is

Indeed, and I'd say that the quality of learning at the prestigious institutions is not much different from the less prestigious ones. Mostly their prestige is self-sustained through being selective amongst their applicants (and they are reasonably good at selecting for ability when they want to be). That does let them dump more work onto students and expect they'll keep up, but also it's quite hard to fail a UK university degree once you get into it, if you keep at it (generally they will try to find some way to award you a third). (And yeah, the fixed prices for a degree in the UK for UK residents results in all kinds of strange flows. Not only are international degrees subsidizing everything else, humanities and mathematics, being generally much cheaper to teach, wind up subsidizing the science, engineering, and especially medical degrees)