I went to a pretty low tier university, and watching videos from places like MIT/Stanford just blows my mind.

It must be amazing to have gone to a university with good teaching and electives, along side peers who actually cared.

I disagree, I have interviewed graduates of both for positions in my team and I have not found that the applicants that came from a prestigious university where inherently better than from a small obscure college. What you get out of your College experience like anything in life it's highly dependent on the personality of the person.

A lot of that is in spite of the university and not because of it. But even a mediocre university will provide more resources than you might find without it.

Really? All of them? How do you know?

You can learn things well being at a shitty uni. I did this. You miss out on the whole experience of being surrounded with awesome people with awesome ideas, though. It's a very important aspect, which is difficult to make up for if you try to. It's possible with computer-related topics because of nntp, irc, ftp, web, and now places like hn. It doesn't fully replace it but it's a good prosthesis. It doesn't work for most other subjects. To put it simply, you can learn to cook italian never have been to Italy -- but you won't be a good cook.