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Yeah, but the same thing happens within American colleges, I hear. As in, studying at a "top" university in America will be more difficult than studying at a "lower" university in America.
This is completely different to Canada, where all accredited universities offer basically the same undergraduate education, it's just perception and entrance standards which differ. So even though one university may have a lot of prestige, the programs themselves don't really change much, unless you get into specifics, like graduate or business programs.
This seems to be magnified in Japan, though. I'm not sure whether there are really any differences in difficulty between top and bottom tier universities in Japan, but there is certainly a "perceived" difference. When I was watching Maison Ikkoku, the main character is embarrassed to even speak the name of his university because it is a "low tier" one. And parents wouldn't hire him to tutor high school kids for that same reason. This may be sort of a repeating cycle, though. Because of perceived differences, and the emphasis on exams and rote learning, I'm guessing that everyone aims for the top universities, and then whoever fails to get in will go down and try the next "tier" of universities, and so on. Self fulfilling prophecy? But still, the actual difficulty of the education may not change.
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