When I attended Duke back in 2002, a typical Ivy(ish) education ran about $200,000. As of 2015, it has breached $250,000 at some schools, and continues to rise:
Some of those who comment or write to me still don’t seem to understand the implications of taking out a quarter-million dollars in debt… nor do they see why I set such high standards for an education with such a superfluous price tag. Is it unreasonable to expect an extortionate experience to be anything less than golden opportunity on a silver platter?
Let’s consider the alternatives abroad.
Oxford or Cambridge, while among the most expensive in Europe, have costs that pale in comparison to their American counterparts. I’ll leave you to do your own analysis, but suffice it to say, it’s a lot less money for no less value or name recognition:
https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/choosing-university/oxford-or-cambridge
But of course, there are plenty of other choices around the globe, from Europe to Canada to Singapore. If I were to pursue another university degree, I’d either do it at a public institution (if I stayed in the US), or I’d do it abroad: the private American system simply doesn’t make good financial sense anymore. The costs are absolutely crippling if you can’t qualify for a scholarship, so unless you have an extremely compelling reason to attend a particular institution, it’s hard to see why it would make sense to bite off more than you can (probably) chew.
Maybe you wish to pursue a career in subatomic physics, and having researched your options carefully, one university stands out above all others. But unless you have such a justification for choosing a private American education above the alternatives, little will justify the sacrifice of two limbs and half your soul to attain a scrap of paper from a “coveted” educational institution whose only real gift to you may be a lifetime of debt to one or more financial institutions.
Let’s take consider some other foreign offerings for comparison. In France, the most expensive university is the École Polytechnique, with a tuition of just €12,000. In Germany and Sweden, the costs are even lower… even for foreign students. These are not Third-World countries with substandard educational systems… quite the contrary. Yet their fees do not result in decades of debt.
As borrowings mount, it’s worth asking: what’s an education worth to you? If you have to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars, just think how much more you’ll have to earn professionally to put your ROI in the black. While a select swathe of degrees may be worthwhile… are you sure that yours will be?
The Ivy Lie 
I have a degree from MIT (’06) and a PhD from an European institutions. I spent 4 years at a medical school in my home country in Brazil: there was nothing there worse than what I received at MIT and in Europe. When you mention “substandard third world education”, be careful. A lot of high quality FREE education is offered in said “third world” for historical reasons. I deeply regret having pursued this path that led me to chronic unemployment.
I went to a Singaporean university for undergrad, and to Vanderbilt for a PhD program. I was lucky I didn’t pay for my masters from Vanderbilt because I left a fully funded PhD program early. Like Peter said, I don’t think my education was any different in Singapore vs. Vanderbilt, aside from nobody thinking I was special for going to that Singaporean university that I had to fight for jobs using only my skills. However, one of the profs told me that all public universities in Singapore are owned and operated by the government, and that they spend $50k usd/year to educate each student, but only charge $5k usd/year in tuition for local Singaporeans, and $15k usd/year for international students, but make the internationals promise to stay for 3 years after graduation and pay taxes/fulfill the labor shortage. If an international doesn’t want that 3 year bond, then they’d be charged the full price of around $50k usd/year, which is the same as any elite American university, but this was rare. That’s basically the government investing in the students education upfront, and hoping they make the money back over time in taxes. I also wasn’t allowed to graduate undergrad in Singapore if I didn’t work at least one external internship in industry, because the government wanted to make sure I would be able to secure a job and pay taxes one day to make back their investment, and I was an international student who had to find a job or else they’d make me pay the money back.
At Vanderbilt they didn’t care what happened to me after graduation or if I was able to secure a job. I was only meant to publish papers for them at the PhD level. Like you Clayton, I also broke into the tech industry from a different STEM field(I was a physics major in undergrad, then engineering for gradschool). That was all on me to study CS while I was still a PhD student and hunting for jobs. My time in Singapore meant I was super paranoid of ever being unemployed after graduation that I applied for jobs 1 year before my thesis defense. The Vanderbilt name only got me an interview and the chance to take math/coding tests which I failed miserably, but it told me what skills I needed to learn if I were to secure a job. I did manage to secure a 6 figure job in tech 2 months before graduation, but it was after many months of reading about CS in my spare time and gaining experience by attending an in-person hackathon at MIT. All in all, I suppose I had misconceptions about how “good” a university was based on its ranking, but in the end a name-brand degree only gets you an interview at most. However, I was still able to get that using my skills alone while in Singapore so I don’t think the degree mattered that much.