I have a different perspective. I'm in my mid-30s, and I'm considering going to college. Now, I can get very senior sysadmin/sre roles, and believe I could get a mid-level swe role (certainly could get a junior swe role)
Point being, I do okay; the Stanford budget of $65K/yr[1] would be super easy if I could work a half-time job/half-time school; or something of that nature, and comparing to getting accepted by Stanford[2], paying for it should be trivial. I've talked employers into letting me work part-time before.
I guess that what I'm saying is that for a nerd, the real cost here is not what you pay for college, it's the time off work. Now, maybe it is worth it and maybe it is not,[3] but even when I was 18 (in 1998) I was making close to $50K/yr.[4] Considering how everything has gone, I bet that was rather more than Stanford charged at the time.
I mean, sure, I see that it's a problem that people pay that much for a degree that doesn't convey a lot of privilege, but if my impression of how much privilege is implied by a degree from a top school is correct, two or three hundred grand for such a degree is downright cheap. We're talking like two Teslas, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't depreciate like a car does, unless the school falls in reputation later on.
I don't want to make light of the problems people who work in lower-paying fields have, and personally, I think it sounds absolutely crazy that you ask people who are all but children to decide if they want to take out loans without the fallback of bankruptcy, and I personally don't have a problem to some extent subsidizing people who want "education for education's sake" -people who want to get educated and then work in a poorly remunerated field, but I'm just saying that as far as I can tell, at least for us nerds, if a school can do what is says it can do[5] and you aren't capable of doing that by yourself, at today's prices, it's a hell of a deal.
[1]http://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/
[2]And qualifying for Stanford will take a lot of test prep, effort and luck on my part. Qualifying is not anywhere near a sure thing for me; and that's the first step. If I can't get into a top-20 type school... I'm probably not gonna bother. My impression is that the benefits drop off pretty sharply.
[3]My impression is that if I want to continue on as an individual contributor, a degree, even a Stanford degree isn't gonna get me all that much. I already can get pretty good individual contributor gigs. But, if I ever want to switch fields or advance into management, a degree from a top college would be extremely valuable.
[4]I haven't yet gone over all the tax details here; all numbers are pre-tax. I do have an accountant, though; if I manage to qualify, I will spend the money to learn what the tax status of educational expenses are in my case. Obviously, if you have to pay for college out of post-tax dollars, that makes a huge difference (and makes the "work half time/school half time" bit essential, because you earn less and pay less in taxes)
[5]The theory is that a school can take a normal person and teach them how to do my job. Maybe this is true, maybe it's not, but If you accept that as true, then even top schools are not expensive.