>>14166256euros without aristocratic family ties come to american universities because all of the available slots in europe are reserved for the well connected.
while picrel russian aristocrats were occupying two slots in french fancy state university even though they were unqualified, some french kid from a nobody family which been picking grapes for the last 4 centuries was forced to look elsewhere in order to study physics. the russian artistocrat bros couldn't push themselves hard enough to actually complete academic work, they just faked their way though without consequence and nobody said a thing because they were aristocrats, thats how things work in europe. works that way in parts of america too, especially the ivy league, stanford, mit, rit, caltech, ect. prestigious institutions attract status symbol seekers.
Thorstein Veblen's 1899 classic The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions explains it all better than i can
