I guess the question is whether you want to help the field more or help students more. It seems to be more cost efficient to put money to a top tier institution

I guess the question is whether you want to help the field more or help students more. It seems to be more cost efficient to put money to a top tier institution that attracts top faculty if you want to advance the field more - this is just a consequence of the way academia works. Credentials seem to matter immensely to many academics, and as a hypothetical situation: choosing Harvard working on things they care less about seems to be much more orthodox an attitude than choosing a provincial university working on things they care about. USM probably won't attract top faculty at the same rate as Harvard and thus won't advance the field as much, at least until it gains a reputation in the research world. Of course without funding that's even less possible, which is a crappy vicious cycle, so there's that.