DLJ154: You can do whatever you want. For whatever reason. You can choose a school because you like the chairs in its classrooms better. But when you phrase it like "be a martyr" it sounds like "well I really want to go to the private school but I'll sacrifice my education to make a point!" And frankly that's stupid.
If all of the best students go to the private schools, where does that leave the public schools? As a graduate student, I'm smart enough to make an informed decision on the value of my education. However, 17 year old children get tricked into believing the best thing they can do with their lives is rack up thousands of dollars of debt paying for a liberal arts education at Ivy League schools, just to get out and pull in the same income as many of their peers who attended the publicly funded schools.
Americans are fortunate to have an education system where most of us can afford to improve ourselves at publicly funded institutions. However, when all of the best students choose to go to the private schools, the quality of the public schools inevitably suffer. As an alumnus of a public and private school, if I choose to donate money where should I donate it? If I'm not willing to give back to the school I am planning on attending, then should I even bother attending?
If your criterion is the affordability of the school to its undergraduate students, you should make that call based on the *individual schools' numbers* not on a general classification. If the state school you are considering has a lower average (mean or median) debt burden on their graduating seniors than the private school you are considering, or however you want to measure that, then great. But you can't assume one to be true over the other just based on private vs "public." Which, by the way, are not that significantly "publicly funded". Unlike K-12, where public = 100% tax funded, available to all, and private = 0% tax funded (except tax-exempt), at the university level it's more like 20-30% vs 0%. And if you want to change that, you need to do it from the ballot box and not the classroom.
Second, your point about Ivies: frankly, this is the one case where it *is* worthwhile to pay more for education, if you can get in. Because name-recognition and alumni networks *do matter*. I found this out firsthand going from a small public school to a state flagship that's top-10 in my program and many others. I'm absolutely sure sitting down to an interview that starts with, "So, Harvard, hmm?" has even more impact. And more relevant to you specifically: I have read that name recognition matters much, much more for MBA and law school than any other type of education, in terms of ROI. Something I'd look into if I went for an MBA.
Finally, your donation argument makes no sense to me. You can donate to any institution or organization you think is doing good work. There's absolutely no requirement you even attend a school to donate to it. Most people choose to donate to their alma mater, but if you want to support the training of doctors and your school didn't have a med school you might donate somewhere else. It's a totally different decision than where you want to be educated.
Also, I think it's moral for Joe the Plumber to pay for my fancy MBA because I volunteered to serve my country during a time of war and deploy into combat. Should that money go back into a publicly funded institution, or into the pockets of the private?
Unless I'm much mistaken, I expect you got paid and received other benefits, which means you didn't volunteer, you took a job. I admire your courage in taking that job, same way I admire firefighters and sometimes police officers, but it's still a job. (Actually, some fire departments aren't paid, so those firefighters *are* volunteers, so they can say that.)
Also, private institutions don't have "pockets," they do not produce profits or dividends for the board or similar (unless it is specifically a "for-profit" educational institution, but that doesn't describe the big universities). They do have endowments:
A financial endowment is a donation of money or property to a not-for-profit organization for the ongoing support of that organization. Usually the endowment is structured so that the principal amount is kept intact while the investment income is available for use, or part of the principal is released each year, which allows for the donation to have an impact over a longer period than if it were spent all at once. An endowment may come with stipulations regarding its usage.
The total value of an institution's investments is often referred to as the institution's endowment and is typically organized as a public charity, private foundation, or trust. Among the institutions that commonly manage endowments are academic institutions (e.g., colleges, universities, and private schools), cultural institutions (e.g., museums, libraries, theaters, and hospitals), and religious organizations.
(Wikipedia)
Essentially, they have a "stache" and live off the interest, as well as tuition and donations.
Again, you can make any decision you want for any reasons you want, even let the Flying Spaghetti Monster guide you with His Noodly Appendage. But when you phrase it as taking a stand against those Evil, Money-Grubbing Ivies (basically) on principle, then you're just wrong, I'm sorry. I'd attend a private university any day over a public university that gets 20% of its operating dollars from the state and puts them all into its football program. What I'm saying is do your research about *individual schools* if you want to make an ideological stand. Don't make decisions based on labels and stereotypes.