I've used Word on both, and while I like the UI better on the Mac, it lacks VBScript, which completely rules it out for many users, and is much slower than its Windows counterpart.
Pages has a great UI, but doesn't do enough. There are an insane number of features that Word has, that even a high school student would need, that are entirely absent from Pages (a robust referencing system, for example).
What I would pay big money for is something that has the functionality of MS Word Mac, without the bloat, and as speedy as Pages.