I think part of it is that Mt Everest is a lot smaller than you’d think when you’re looking at this scale. The moon is only 2% of the Earths volume so when you spread it over the Earths surface it’s really like a thin thin film to cover the whole surface. But the truth is that all of human experience is an even thinner film smeared across the surface.
Maybe they were calling them out by the students actually present instead of by the colleges nearby.