[mitchi]

To me it seems really silly to spend 100K to learn things that are only at a Bachelor's level. People who did their bachelor's in other countries like France or Sweden, for free, are learning the same things from scientific papers right now. Even if the Bachelor degree is harder or better, there is no difference in the end because it's only Bachelor level stuff.

Harvard or MIT cannot make you into a powerful machine. The most important thing to achieve a big scientific career is to be born with the genetics and the willpower to work. It seems that going to Harvard or Stanford takes care of the latter part since you are betting your life on a few years of your life and you are taking extraordinary debt to do so. If you're getting it all for free, you probably won't work as hard right? But after a few years, if you go to the master degree or the doctorate, what difference does it make? None.

[zanny]

The money isn't for the knowledge, its for the credentials. Having a degree from a perceived "top" school is being oversold as extremely valuable when job hunting. Actual skillset is irrelevant.

What ends up being really relevant is that a lot of the big gun companies target schools, and recruit right from the graduating crop in person, sometimes with barely an interview as long as the GPA is reasonable. That has value bordering on that 100k price tag.

[muzz]

Numbers like that are often red herrings. Harvard undergraduates have an average student loan debt of $11,780 [1]. While it's not $10k, and it is debt, it's really not that much higher.

[1] http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/10/18/graduates-small-...