the thing is, law, and colleges, have for so long been bound by “status” and “rank” and by trying to perceived by others as the best and brightest.
that brand value does have some value–when you talk to other lawyers, and you tell them you’re from a top school, they think immediately, here’s a smart guy. It also has a slight intimidation factor.
True also with college degrees. guy graduates from harvard you think, well, hell, he’s probably fairly clever. that’s translated into money and access to jobs for years.
the price one should be willing to pay to buy that status is not limitless. at a certain debt level it’s just a bad bad bet. even if you have the cash lying aboutstagnating, waiting to be applied to someprestigious degree, it still might be a poor use of funds.
However, a huge segment of society–including myself–has for a long time eschewed looking at educational investment as merely a dollars and cents investment. it gets all tied up with “the college experience”, with life-forming identity trips and finding yourself and your identity, and other intangibles, so that the value becomes harder and harder to pin down.
Kinda like real estate, but even worse, since the very future of your children may depend on the school you select! how can you be so low as to skimp on money!?
When you think it through, coldly, rationally, the education has value–like a house–but you need to think long and hard about what youre willing to pay for it and more improtant, to borrow for it–and not necessarily give up opportunities for low-price options that could turn out to be good strong financial decisions.
because our ego is involved, and our fear for our children’s future, this analysis is going to be very difficult to do in a cold manner. If emotion is involved in real estate purchases, then I submit that emotion squared is involved in college selection (and to some extent, law school selection).
