Is going to an elite college worth the cost?

Absolutely yes. Much like doing a startup in the valley brings a hoard of intangible benefits, so does attending a great university. Being surrounded by peers who are dedicated to learning and having a supportive environment which encourages you to explore create an experience unlike any other. It may not be as financially rewarding as it once was, but a university degree is indubitably still 'worth the cost'.

On that note, I'm tired of having links that only look at schooling from an economic viewpoint. It's the tea party of educational criticism: an empty, intentionally deceptive stance that somehow manages to be controversial enough to come up regularly. You'd think that the startup community would know and accept that the best ideas don't come from hard financial reasoning (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc). If you can believe it for a company, why not for an education?