Again an individual call. I once had an admin who who studied English at Stanford.
It’s always worth it if the individual feels like it was. And not if they don’t.
You’ll never have consensus. It’s why this type of thread gets redone over and over.
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Of course it’s worth it.
I work at an asset management firm - we disproportionately hire from elite colleges for front office positions. Back office positions are filled with people who didn’t go to elite colleges.
It’s an incredibly weird dynamic where you can have teams that work on different floors/the same floor but one section earns multiples of the other (back office vs front office).
There are people on the investment floor who make millions, people who make much less on the non-investment floors and then people on less than $40k a year in our office outside of the city for auxiliary staff.
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Several members of my family are UVA graduates and none of them would have had to pay $50K to attend Brown or Cornell.
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Maybe because name recognition in the vast part of society isn’t important to us?
Also . . . Members of the elite, or upper class, absolutely have heard of all these schools.
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But the other things may include -
Location - my son was offered $85k base by a defense contractor Nw of Providence. SW of Boston. He declined because of COL.
My daughter wants to be, for lack of a better word - a do gooder. So she shouldn’t expect to be a highly paid person.
We measure by money and it’s fair. But in reality it’s not the only factor into happiness or at least initial happiness. Often those in public or low paid type jobs realize the financial peril and attempt to pivot later.
There are many professions, often via the state schools, that will never do well salary wise - teaching is another.
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I don’t think these schools have “very low name recognition in the vast part of society”.
And I’m not upper class or elite. BUt we have lots of family all over the place. And lots of college discussions when others were looking for colleges. I don’t live in a bubble.
And we fully paid for expensive private colleges for both of our kids for undergrad…because we could. And we don’t regret it one bit.
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Yes, for the financial industry and a couple of others like management consulting and Big Law, there is great value in going to an elite school. These industries still operate an “old boy’s network”, for lack of a better term, and hire predominantly from a small set of big-name schools.
But I think OP is asking in general. I recall @ucbalumnus had a thread discussing the benefit (not value) of elite schools across different industries, and it definitely varies. A lot.
In any case, my view is: if a family is able to afford it and thinks an elite education is worth the price, it’s not my place to tell them otherwise.
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Specific to Wall Street this goes to the point I have made on the AMA thread. Lots of non investment bankers work for investment banks in support roles. These roles are not typically those jobs students seeking banking careers are thinking of and the support roles are much lower paying.
People with limited Wall Street experience often make the mistake of confusing a school having a few alum at I Banks as evidence of it being a path to Wall Street jobs. In reality a person from a state school with a CS degree in the IT dept of an i bank is indicative of very little from the perspective of an aspiring I banker considering the value of elite schools
As much as it runs against CC conventional wisdom, there are some careers where elite schools are heavily over represented and advantageous.
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Both of the following are true:
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Elite colleges don’t guarantee elite outcomes.
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Elite colleges may provide better and/or extra opportunities for some students who can take advantage of those opportunities.
The latter determines whether elite colleges are worth paying extra for. Together they mean that some students will be better off having attended elite colleges, some worse off (financially) because they weren’t able to take advantage of the opportunities, and others indifferent.
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Knowing this won’t stop this discussion (or any of the following ones on the same topic) - Perhaps the reason different people make different decisions when it comes to choosing and paying for college is that we all come to the decision with our own set of preferences, biases and resources.
There are plenty of people on these boards who can (and happily do) pay full price for ‘elite’ schools.
There are plenty of people on these boards who can (and happily refuse to) pay full price for ‘elite’ schools.
There are plenty of people on these boards who believe that the in-state flagship public is the best way to get a reasonably priced education.
There are plenty of people on these boards who believe that LACs are special and worth paying for, ‘elite’ or otherwise.
There are plenty of people on these boards who have to make their decisions based primarily upon cost, and their decisions become weighing the trade-offs of choosing the lowest cost school, choosing debt for the ‘better’ name, etc.
It can be hard to remember that while ‘elite’ schools might offer some family the lowest cost options, they can be full pay for others. It can be hard to remember that some families don’t care primarily about cost. It can be hard to reconcile that some families do care about cost over prestige.
The hardest thing (imo) is to believe that each family is making rational choices with the best information available. I think that’s why so many can be so passionate expressing their own choices and beliefs during these discussions.
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I agree - or at least those initially hiring these successful grads.
I made the comment like I did because someone made the comment about Lehigh - which I personally think does have solid name recognition.
In the end it all goes back to - everyone can and should spend as they see fit. @blossom is right - some suitcases are $50 and others $1500. We don’t sit at luggage claim and analyze. Someone decided to spend $1500.
No different than a Benz and Kia will get you to the same place. But some choose to spend on the Benz.
My only concern with expense is affordability. If someone wants to strain themselves, it’s their right. I hate to see it but it’s their right. But if someone chooses not to pay back money owed - well that’s unfair to all of us !!
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I read this article just the other day which pointed out that journalists at both The NY Times and Wall Street Journal disproportionately attended elite schools nowadays, which hadn’t been the case 30-40 years ago. [A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.]
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Maybe I’ll create a side hustle where I sell t-shirts and bumper stickers online.
“My plumber makes more than your (insert elite college name here) grad.”
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I don’t get this argument to be honest.
Most of America would get to go to an elite college for free or next to nothing.
So, for them, yes, it’s worth it.
The only real group that would be debating this are probably people coming from households making between $250k to $400k a year.
People coming from households making over $400k a year can afford to pay $80k/yr for their kid.
It’s an incredibly niche group of people who this affects so I’m not sure how this topic seems to come up so frequently.
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I think that it depends. For some students an “elite” university will not be expensive because they will get need based aid. For some other students an elite university might be worth it in spite of needing to pay full price. For some other students an elite university might not be worth the price. For some other students an elite university might not be a good fit.
I recently attended my 50th reunion at MIT. I had a great time at the reunion, attended the graduation ceremony, got to attend a very good talk about cancer research with a daughter who has done cancer research, and was particularly impressed that they still had my sailing card from 53 1/2 years ago and it still allowed me to sail. However, after all these years I still do not know if it was worth the price for me (McGill would have been a fraction of the price). One thing that I have realized only recently is that one of the big things that I gained at MIT was just learning that I could do it.
People talk about the networking advantages of being an alumni of a famous school. However, I have gotten most of my jobs from a network of colleagues who I met through work. I met none of them at university.
My wife attended a fairly ordinary public university for undergrad. However, she did attend an elite university for her master’s degrees. It appears that the elite university was worth it for her for her master’s (but it was a lot less than four years).
One daughter similarly did not attend an elite university for her bachelor’s, but is at a highly ranked university for her graduate program (DVM). For her graduate program, she has benefited from some very good facilities and opportunities. I do not know whether these would have been available at a different university. Graduate programs however tend to be highly specialized. Also, highly ranked DVM programs are not always located at highly ranked universities.
From a financial perspective I am pretty sure that you are right specifically for my daughter who is getting a DVM. However, we can afford to help her, and it is the right path for her. I think of the phrase “happy as a pig in slop” but in some cases this is really quite close to being literally accurate.
I think that this is exactly correct. I also think that it can be difficult in some cases to know whether it is going to be worth the cost.
And I do think that mountains of debt can be very risky, and can have very bad consequences.
OMG. 
A mountain of debt for a non-elite private school to me seems like it could be a very bad idea.
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I agree with this philosophically- but most of the data I’ve seen shows that a high percentage of the loans are for grad school and for the “for profit” colleges which suck student’s Pell grants out of the government, then the private loans, for “degrees” which do not pay out as the student’s and their family’s expect.
So if you want to talk unfair- a first gen college student who thinks that a degree in “forensic science” qualifies them to become a medical examiner like they see on TV- that’s unfair. Or a first gen kid who thinks that a bachelor’s in sports management is going to land him a job as an agent representing NFL players. Nobody explains about Med school and Law school and how their local diploma mill qualifies them for neither- and oh, loan repayments start in a few months.
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Columbia does also. It is a very good program.
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This is a logical fallacy. You don’t have to spend it on anything. The proper calculation of opportunity cost is what is the difference worth invested over a whole career.
Of course, these are all parent decisions (or decisions forced by parent circumstances). A traditional student’s choice of college (any college, not just elite ones) or often whether they will be able to go to college at all is mostly dependent on parent circumstances and choices. Only within the constraints imposed by parent circumstances and choices will the student’s own achievements matter.
Most of America would not be admitted to an elite college, so they would not be able to go to such a college (at any or no cost).
Also, even among those who could get admitted, many have divorced parents, which often results in unfavorable financial aid calculations at elite colleges.
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