<p>@Blossom and @Momzie, thanks for two clear expositions. </p>
<p>Two key changes. </p>
<ol>
<li> College costs (like health care costs) have risen faster than the rate of inflation for decades. So college (and grad school) cost much more relative to income than when we parents went to college.</li>
<li> The middle class in the US has nicer cars, washing machines, phones, etc. and has cell phones and computers that it didn’t have when the parents’ generation(s) on here were growing up/going to college. But, relatively speaking, middle class incomes have declined relative to the top 10%/1%/.1%. There is/will be a big difference between being in the very upper tiers than being in the middle going forward. My sense is that this trend will accelerate. Part of the concern about “prestige” and STEM is about giving our kids the chance to a) get on a good career track; and b) give them a chance to be in the upper tiers.</li>
</ol>
<p>One debate in these threads is whether prestige gets you anything. The answer is, of course, “It depends.” Per Blossom, Williams beats all other schools for art history, but also does an extremely strong job of getting kids admitted to top business and law schools (maybe med schools too). I have a friend who went to an HYP and then a top law school (top 1 or 2?). He said, “I often feel guilty that I went to my alma mater. I know that I have opportunities that other equally capable people didn’t get because of the school name on my resume. Granted, when I interviewed, I had to impress them and when I got the job, I had to do an excellent job. But, I had a better shot at getting the opportunity.” He worked as a lawyer and then the general counsel for a tech company that was acquired by a big tech company and he now no longer needs to work for annual income. He’s doing some interesting stuff, but no longer working for a salary. Incidentally, he met his wife at college and his daughter now attends (or maybe has graduated) so he doesn’t feel too guilty. </p>
<p>But, the advantages are probabilistic. You have a greater shot at getting certain opportunities. You have that greater shot because recruiters think that your prestigious school is a rich pool in which to fish. But that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t do just as well in a less prestigious pool or that you won’t, by virtue of bad luck, bad choices, or failures to take advantage of opportunities that come because of being in that pool.</p>
<p>One additional point similar to @mathmom’s. I come from a tribe that has been kicked out of country after country over the last two millenia. Culturally, we have developed a love for learning and the belief that the best thing we can do is to give our kids an education that they can take with them wherever they chose to or are forced to go. So, in weighting the tradeoffs between investment in future education and our assets/retirement income, we would weigh investing in education more heavily than folks whose history doesn’t involve forced deportation or genocide. We would pay for the right grad schools (e.g. strong schools in good fields) for our kids when many wouldn’t because a) the financial tradeoff is probably less costly for us; and b) we value seeing the kids firmly established with degrees that afford them a life of reasonable options. But, there is nothing normative about this. We don’t think there is any reason others should see the tradeoffs in the same way. The tradeoffs may be much more financially costly for them. Or their parents didn’t pay for them to go to college and they project that history on their current choices just as I project my past history on to my current choices. </p>
<p>The future may not be like the past either for my family or for the folks who figure that it doesn’t really matter which school you go to or that their kids should pay for their own college espenses. The global economy is becoming extremely competitive. I suspect that we will have repeated economic shocks (what happens as quantitative easy goes away; what happens when China has its first recession, etc.) But the past is a big influence on how we make tradeoffs. We may make decisions based upon what happened in the past and not what is most likely going to happen in the future.</p>