Don't confuse the credential factory with the skills and quality of the underlying students. Harvard is little more than a toll booth for students who were already smart and over-achieving. It's not like the teaching is extraordinary.
Harvard does substantially more than teach undergrads.
> Lawyers? Doctors? Medical research? Thousands of highly educated graduates annually?
Lawyers and doctors aren't undergrads.
Medical research depends heavily on faculty and postgraduate folks.
Only some of their thousands of annual graduates are undergrads - about 1/3 of them, per Wiki.
I am confused. Who says credentials only apply to undergrads?
I said they do more than teach undergrads, to which you re-quoted me questioningly.
Include postgraduate folks and they're still doing a lot more than just teaching and credentialing. Places like Harvard output research, too.
A university research lab is controlled by usually one professor or a very small number of professors. They can decide to move to another university and take the lab with them.