So top-tier -> state school but state school -/-> top-tier. I don't think that implies anything about hiring bars. My philosophy professor from community college graduated from a top-tier university and he chose to teach at a community college because he knew he would do much more good that way instead of being a professor at a top-tier university.

More generally, associating prestige with educational institutions is why they've started to decline because optimizing for prestige is not the same as educating the next generation of visionaries.