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No. Even with the "connections" it wouldn't be worth that much money. And being at an Ivy doesn't mean you will make meaningful connections yourself. I'd certainly take the opportunity if I didn't have to pay though.
The biggest shame about college education is that it used to be that you paid a lot of money for your degree, but the result is you had a credential that made you stand out from other folks in the job market and you were almost sure to land a job and launch into a successful career. These days, with so many people getting college degrees, the credential no longer puts you into an exclusive group and thus it is no guarantee of anything except that it is a pre-requisite of getting in to grad school. Grad school is the new college -- it's what you have to do to stand out these days. Unfortunately, even though college degrees are less valuable nowadays relative to how it used to be, the cost of college keeps rising at a reliable clip. Unsustainable.
If you live in Pennsylvania, it is $100,000 for a Bachelor's Degree. I don't know what the answer is at this point. There are a lot of student loans out there that are going to be defaulted on. With 1 Trillion debt and rising so fast that statistics can't keep up, it is going to be so far out of hand that I have no idea how it will work out. I suspect there will be some big government bailout for the poor and for the middle-class, they will be stuck. The rich don't care because they wrote a check!
Carnegie Mellon tops 60k/yr, with room and board plus tuition. Granted, CMU Computer Science grads are the highest earners of any school, but that's after shelling out what might be 240k for their degrees.
They (and they alone) will make it back within a year or two.
The problem comes when people get mediocre degrees from prestigious schools for fields where the hiring metabolism is weak.
Harvard is probably worth that, not that most students actually pay the full ticket price. It just looks far, far better on your resume to go to Harvard versus a state school, connections aside.
A college degree can cost quite a bit and still pay off over a lifetime. There are many studies that prove beyond doubt that the earnings for anyone with a college degree from anywhere are significantly more than not having one. Even if one did pay $260,000, it's likely to be covered over a lifetime of earnings.
In 2011, the MEDIAN salary for a man with a bachelor's degree was $66,200. For a woman it was $49,110. For a man with a high school diploma, the median salary in 2011 was $40,050 and for women it was $30,010. (Digest of Educational Statistics) Of course salaries aren't consistent over a lifetime, but if a man made the $26,150 more that he would get with a college degree, over 30 years that would add up to $784,500! Feel free to cut that in half assuming that the case study's median salary would not be that much over a lifetime. That's still $392,250, more than enough to cover the cost of $260,000 the OP claims top colleges are charging. How Much More Do College Graduates Earn Than Non-College Graduates?
According to the U.S. Department of Education, people with a bachelor's degree take home an average of 66% more than those who have only a high school diploma. While college-educated workers' wages have increased over the past two decades, those with only a high school education have seen decreases in annual salaries in the same time period.
If the OP's question is actually "does a degree from an elite university pay off more than a degree from an average institution," there is significant research, replicated over time, that shows they do not, as long as you're looking at students with similar SAT scores. The Ivy League Earnings Myth - US News
Regarding that $260,000 price, the Business Insider maintains that an Ivy League education is not a lot more pricey than a less prestigious degree for most students. "The idea that attending an elite school means shackling yourself to a lifetime of debt is one of the most persistent myths in higher education." Ivy League Schools Are Surprisingly Cheap - Business Insider
Yes, a good education is priceless. Must one go Ivy League or to an expensive place to get a good education? Maybe.
The confusion between job training, college degrees and an education is......wait for it.......likely due to an overall lousy education system! Just my opinion.
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