"College education" in America is a reward to junior for not burning the house down, and to keep little missy under her family's wing for another four years. Ask your average spender of other people's money what they are actually doing with this time and most responses equal the blank stare.
That's why we make our kids sign for their own loans for college. We have four, and we told them that we would like to retire in relative comfort before we're old and decrepit, and that we paid for Catholic schools for them from grades 1 to 12, so it was time for them to pony up. The older two are finished with college; one is in his last year of Law School, and the second is in his second year of a six year PhD program. We have two more coming up, and they know the drill already, and are looking for more affordable colleges.
Maybe I'm a reverse snob, but I don't see that Hahvad, Yale, Brown or any of the other Ivy Leagues educate anyone any better than some other, less expensive alternatives. Our neighbor's oldest son gave up a full scholarship to Emory Univ. because he was accepted at Harvard. He finished in three years, because he had a LOT of AP credits, but he still owed a bunch of money in loans. He told his Mom a year or two later that he regretted not having taken advantage of the scholarship because he felt he could have gotten an equal education and gotten out without any debt.