ivy or not ivy

I attended a networking party last night, and had a chat with an American who is from NYC but have lived in Sinapore for 8 years. He works as a COO for a company here.

Together with a guy from Singapore, we talked about kids education, and in particular, ivy schools. He said some opinion which I think makes sense, and am posting here fyi. Am not seeking for support here, but rather FYI only as said.

His opinion is, he would rather save the money and send his kids (has two in high school) to public universities, which charges much lower tuition and they can go to elite graduate schools, if they have this plan. His arguments are two folds:

1. Kids need to know peers from different classes of the society where they come from, when they are in college, need to mingle with them, and have a strong bonding. This will help him to understand the real life of different aspects of the society, and will help him when he enter the workforce. In this sense, kids who have been going to ivy schools starts the elite track very early, and maybe blinded to some aspects of normal life of the ordinary people. The example he used was GW Bush.

2. The elite school charge a very high tuiation, so instead of paying for 4 years for undergraduate education, pay for 2-3 years for the graduate school. If he has the ambition to get a master degree, he could work hard at state univeristy, get a good grade, know different level of society, and get the elite experience at graduate level.

His opinion is this could be a good mix for middle class and for kids with ambition. Of course, for family which have millions and do not need to think about money, it is a different story. Still, they may lack some experience mingling and bonding with other kids.