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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

If you’ve got that kind of money to burn on sending your kids there for funsies, is it even “being taken advantage of”?

A degree from an "elite" school costs about the same as an expensive luxury watch or car, and I'm sure that many applicants see such a degree as a prestige symbol that defies utilitarian value. Just because the author doesn't see the logic doesn't mean that there isn't any there, or that anyone is being swindled.

Are you saying that a luxury watch costs the same as a luxury car?

If that is true (which I find incredibly hard to believe) it literally makes no sense. The utility and the ability of a car to give you a ROI compared to a watch is almost infinitely more.

While the entry price for luxury watches is lower than it is for luxury cars, I see a fair amount of Pateks and APs that go for at least $100,000. There are many more exclusive models and companies that I know next to nothing about that are significantly more expensive, but you can get a sense of the wider market here: https://www.hodinkee.com/packages/all-the-new-watches-of-202.... And yes, I agree that the utility of a car far outweighs that of a mechanical watch. It's also why I believe that paying $150,000 for a fancy master's degree at a world-famous school is a pretty sweet deal for the wealthy and vain.

To be fair, a $150,000 watch can be re sold. High end watches hold their value incredibly well, and in some cases can even appreciate in value. Even luxury cars, which typically depreciate quite quickly, can be re-sold for a significant portion of their purchase price.

The same cannot be said of a $150,000 education, which cannot be re-sold. Perhaps in some cases a high value education can be turned into a higher value career, but that’s obviously not relevant to the hypothetical rich kid getting a film degree at Columbia.

Try a search for Patek Philippe watches. Some of the used ones are under $10k, but new ones go into the millions.

Depends what watches you’re talking about. For some brands $50k is the basic model.

Exactly. My point was this group is very willingly exploiting themselves.

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