People think Harvard, Yale, Duke, and Stanford are not only elite, but that the connections they will make there will lead to the best jobs. Those connections are there for certain families, if you aren't from those elite old money families, most of those doors are still shut to you.
And I am not so sure you're getting any better education at some "elite" school than you can at any other college. I work in aerospace, I've worked with "bad" engineers with MIT and Stanford degrees, below average ones from the service acadamies, and brilliant ones from tier 2 state schools. Basically, at a school like Stanford, you're getting students who competed in high school and had little time to goof around.
And once you're in your career, your college becomes less and less important. No one cares where you went to college after 5 years, what you've done those first 5 years will matter about 10 times as much as the name on your degree does. One thing you should judge a college by is their relationships with companies you may want to work for for internships, that can make a huge difference in getting in the field you want to.
All college should be affordable, but the fields that we really are short of grads from should absolutelty be free. STEM should be free. We need engineers, scientists, mathematicians and technologists in this country badly. They're what drives innovation and keeps us competitive. These are the last people we should be saddling with debt to get through college.
And voerall, we need more college gradfs, not less. The skilled trades can be a great alternative for some, but those jobs aren't as great as they once were either. Grew up in the 70s and 80s, from the first day I got to kindergarten, they have been telling me I will need a college education to be middle class, and they turned out to be right in my case.
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