How much worse off is someone going to UMass by your calculation?
Given that everyone was living in Boston post-graduation and the base CoL is somewhere between 40 and 50k per year. The MIT folks had somewhere between 2 and 20x the disposable income at graduation. Meaning their debt burden was much lower.
Umnass opens doors in MA the way smoking pot makes it easier to make friends in college. You instantly have some token thing in common with a sizeable minority of the people around you and that gets you a head start on developing relationships.
I did ok in college and very well in the private sector. I started as a sysadmin for a small finance company and am now a senior software engineer at Amazon Alexa working on ML for search. Hard work always pays off as long as your in the right field ( comp-sci is a great field ).
Once you've done something in the industry, almost no one is going to give a hoot about what school you went to, they're going to care about what you've done in the industry, but at the start at least, you may have to settle for something a little shittier.
But for Boston College, Boston University, or Northeastern? You’re probably going to end up paying more than MIT and get an education that’s indistinguishable from UMass, quite possibly worse in some respects.
What people have been saying in this thread is not incorrect (though should be nuanced): the ivy leagues are worth it for the caliber of the student body and reputation; otherwise, go to a (Tier 1) public school.
Unless, of course, you don’t want to and can easily afford otherwise.
What matters a lot more than the name of the institution on your degree is experience; getting that experience may be a bit tougher at a small school (you don't have FAANGs or huge biotech firms recruiting there), but it is certainly not impossible.
Three of the last four engineers I hired had no formal CS degree (but they had gone to bootcamps).
Isn't Northeastern still a big cooperative education school?
I assure you that those of us in engineering know the difference between a student with work experience and one with only academic experience.