But don't be fooled by a college saying that its classes are better because its smaller ... People can be very proud that their school has 'great' lectures in what I would consider high school level biology, simply because their professor is 'fun.'

It seems to me that you are mainly objecting to people caring about teaching quality than disagreeing with their assessment. Maybe people are fools to care about class size and student evaluations, but they appear to care, unless I'm confusing consoling lies with actual advice.

Yes curriculum matters, but that is much more predicted by student quality than professor quality: two kinds of prestige diverge.