I don't know if you're beeing sarcastic or not. If so, excuse me please. Anyway you are probably right. I am still not sure about that phrasing. What I wanted to refer to, is that the Stuff you get teached at MIT still isn't any harder or easier than the stuff you can read or maybe already have read in books anyway. When I started college my profs where constantly referring to Tanenbaum, Dijkstra and co. Texts I have read and understood 5 years before I finished school.

Perhaps you shouldn't extrapolate your experience to that of students at MIT (or other universities outside of your country you've not attended, for that matter)?

I'm in the U.S., and I can tell you that having gone to a good, but regular state university for undergrad, and then to much more prestigious university for grad school, the difference between the two was striking. I went from being one of the smarter students in the class, to one of the least smart (or at best, the middle). I expected this university to be better, but it was quite a shock just how much better it was.

Is it possible that what they teach at MIT might go beyond the "trivia" or rote memorization that you describe being taught at your country's schools?