My kids need to be practical people, understand money and especially debt, and be able to make strong investments choices--and also take the risks I couldn't take. College debt is not a risk, it's a surefire way of being poor and having fewer options. You have to have a plan you can articulate whenever you are taking on debt.
The only reason I can see stretching to some rarefied school is because you want to connect socially with people who are more well off than you are in hopes of "marrying up." I think that what I just said did pretty much worked out for me--after all the hard work I put in, a fundamental irony of my life is that my happiness didn't come from schooling, it came from marrying the right woman whom I would not have met had I not sought out a PhD. You can't overlook the indirect benefits.