Past research has suggested that after considering the costs and future benefits, getting a college degree from an elite institution is generally not worth the higher price and that students would be better off getting their degree from a high-quality public university. Recently, the Washington Post has an article that seems to confirm this finding:

Paying those tuition bills may sabotage your ability to save for retirement or necessitate a second mortgage on your house. But, in the end, your goal should be to send your kid to the most exclusive, impressive option available. The payoff is obvious: In a society that likes to think of itself as a meritocracy, the Ivies and other selective private schools offer a shortcut to the top.

They promise an instant pedigree, future wealth and an opportunity to mix with the country’s next generation of movers and shakers. But what if all those calculations and assumptions are wrong? What if all those Ivy graduates whose parents shelled out $150,000 or even $200,000 for their undergraduate degrees could have done just as well if they’d gone somewhere else? Somewhere much cheaper?

Research implies that is actually the case. According to these recent studies, when you do a cold, hard analysis -- removing family dreams and visions of class rings -- the Ivies and other elite private schools simply aren’t worth the money.

This article does an impressive job at laying out the arguments on both sides and in describing the costs and benefits associated with different options. One interesting point they make however, is that as tuition costs have skyrocketed in the past ten years or so, the top public universities are slowly becoming less of a bargain, especially for out-of-state students.

I certainly am not going to tell anybody how to spend their own money. But as a product of public universities myself, I can personally attest to their value, as can millions of other graduates around the country. I also support the idea of public institutions acting as a counterbalance to the elitist mentality that can pervade Ivy League and other similar institutions.

At the same time, having been briefly (and I guess indirectly) exposed to a liberal arts environment, I can also see the value in going to a smaller, liberal arts school where you would get a much more personalized experience, as opposed to a large university (public or private) where it’s easy to get lost among tens of thousands of other students.

In the end, when my daughter is ready to go off to college, it will ultimately be her decision, based on her evaluation of all these factors. After all, it is her education, and nobody else’s.