"But why the Ivy League, Gill?"

I'm still rooting around to find suitable ideas for 'prime directive contamination' planets for the USS Carter - the ones that turned themselves into Rome or the Roaring 20's or the Nazis because those were the costumes available that week of contact with a Federation ship. One that did some up as funny but not workable? 

The Carter crew beams down into a bucolic scene of ivy covered brick buildings in the crisp fall air. The inhabitants seem peaceful and friendly and outgoing, immersed in a love of learning and fellowship. When the Carter crew leaves the compound they learn that the adults are trapped in a decades-long hell of debt poverty, forced to work off the debt accrued during their mandatory educational cycle.  A Federation cultural anthropologist, searching for a way to provide better education to an alien culture, unwittingly introduced the late 20th century concept of institutes of higher learning where price was presumed to equate to quality, with people begging to spend more for a more prestigious degree. The collapse to dystopia outside the ivory towers (hey, there's a good episode name) was inevitable.  

I suspect this might strike too close to home for some of the players.