> Students at random Italian University don't have a connection to people doing the most advanced research in the world.

I did graduate in an Italian University I'm co-author of multiple high-impact papers.

Each and every one of my professors led advanced research in their field. Yes, they were limited in their budgets, had a handful of postdocs, not 50, in their labs, but that didn't make them any less good or prepared as scientists.

And I've also studied and worked in an American university, Ohio State in my case, as did several of my peers that went to ivy league ones.

I stand by my opinion: what makes some universities better is funding and the average quality of the student being impacted by the acceptance filtering.

The argument you bring up, if relevant, makes a difference when your education ends and your research career begins. Does not make you better at understanding organic chemistry or calculus.

You call them table stakes, yet, lack of fundamentals is widespread even among ivy league graduates in my experience.