It may have started that way, but then progress was made based on the principle of meritocracy.
Now it is regressing due to vague "social justice" principles.
Unfortunately the same institution is today spending too much time and energy on various socio-political abstractions, hence it is not being able to offer the same opportunities for scientific exploration I enjoyed during my time there to the new generation.
From my experience, the pinnacle of education was around the end of the cold war here in the West, then it started going downhill once we lacked a properly defined adversary and started to look for enemies and oppressors in our own midst.