[game_the0ry]

Nowadays college is less about high quality education and more social signaling of prestige among peers. From that perspective, your student who is paying $200k is making a rational decision in her mind.

When she graduates, she may get a prestigious high paying job (investment banking or management consulting) and that will validate her decision. If instead she gets an "ok" job and most of her peers are form lower-ranked colleges, she will feel like she is top of the social / prestige hierarchy, thus validating her decision, bc social prestige has its own unquantifiable value.

[strikelaserclaw]

Really depends on the field. If you are a law firm, then they want as many ivy league graduates as possible because that is attractive to prospective clients (regardless of the individual merits of people working at said law firm) but if you are google, it makes no economic sense to pick person A from Harvard when person B from community college is much better. I look at my own company (in a "hard" field like google), we got our fair share of top college grad's at all levels but there isn't a large correlation between position and where someone went to school. Our interview process for engineering is 100% technical and people who pass can join regardless of things like education background. As for social heiarchy, people at my company demonstrate their worth by delivering things (that is how the status at my company is determined, what did you do?), you'd get laughed out of the room if you wanted respect because you went to some prestigious school.

[game_the0ry]

Agreed - certain prestige-driven fields highly desire high-ranked academic pedigree, but not all fields. I'm just saying people are willing to borrow the amount equal to like half the median home price for that prestige.