I am critical of your arguments for many reasons. They are not well reasoned, poorly communicated, and predicated on an "anti-fetish" as you so eloquently put i

I am critical of your arguments for many reasons. They are not well reasoned, poorly communicated, and predicated on an "anti-fetish" as you so eloquently put it. 1) False. Go look it up. 2) The site doesn't include a year of work post graduation. This is a bad comparison. 3) False. I believe their placement rate is ~98% or so, check their website. Also, never cite "I know a friend...", anecdotal evidence is almost worse than no evidence. 4) False. Rankings are a bad metric to assess research prominence, as research quality varies markedly across departments. Additionally, research prowess is likely diametrically opposed to the goals of a student seeking an undergrad education in a co-op focused program. 5) Yup. Still a deal for internationals though. 6) Wholesomeness of research ideals aside, industry funding is key for applied research. The government is certainly not going to fund compiler research, or work on applied group theory. I suggest you reconsider this idealism. We have rules that all donations and research grants need to be reported, so you can look this up. All large universities in north america with good research programs in engineering typically have strong funding from large corporations. That being said, I am in no way affiliated with UW, other than being an academic, and knowing well about their excellent reputation in research and in placement rates for their math/cs/eng undergrads. Many large firms recruit from the Woo that do not in fact recruit from pretentious British schools. Why? Simple: It is well known that the 'elite' universities suffer from drastic grade inflation. Strong co-op programs provide employers with significant extra data about potential employees. What kind of projects did they work on? What are their work reviews like? Grades and university ranking/brand are nearly meaningless these days -- see pg's excellent essay on this topic.