We seem to do a really good job at reverse snobbishness here. Which suits me, because that's kinda how I think in general. But it does bug me when we apply it to kids' educations; there seems to be this implication that wanting to go to a high-powered school or have a big career is bad, and that parents who prioritize things like paying for private school are simply chasing status/throwing away money/raising entitled twits/[insert other negative connotation here]. And really, I think that's bullshit.
My own analysis has been based around a few specific facts:
1. We make more money than we need. That's due in large part to our own parents' investment in our educational success, which put us in a position to take advantage of good career opportunities.
2. DH and I are both smart and ambitious. We chose demanding careers for Reasons, and those careers have served us well on many fronts.
3. The reality is that certain career paths are either foreclosed to, or much harder for, kids who don't follow particular paths. I know this for a fact, because I was never in the class that had those opportunities -- I was always the poor kid on scholarship, who had neither the background nor the connections to succeed in something like hedge funds or white-shoe law firms. (Luckily, I never really wanted power/fame enough to put in the work necessary to succeed in that sort of environment)
4. I don't give a shit whether my kids choose a similar career path, a more demanding/higher-profile path,* a non-demanding career path that values personal satisfaction over income, or something completely different. What I do care about is providing my kids better opportunities than I had, to the extent that it is reasonably within my ability to do so. Ultimately, I want my kids to be able to follow whatever path suits their skills and personalities and goals (and to think through the costs and tradeoffs of each possible path, of course).
5. No matter what path my kids take, they're going to get jack shit as financial aid, because 1 above. And frankly, they shouldn't; morally and ethically, I should be the one paying full freight, because there are many many many other kids who need the aid money far more than my kids do.
6. Ergo, I have saved money to allow my kids to attend whatever school best serves their long-term goals, because I can afford to do so. But we're not just throwing money at them and calling it good; rather, we have had years of conversations about the tradeoffs of the various career paths, the cost-effectiveness of various choices for school and major, and what the different types of schools require and provide. The ultimate goal is to give my kids both the financial ability to choose whatever path best suits their own particular goals, along with the knowledge and analytical ability to figure out what their own goals should be and make a good choice about the best path to get them there.
So far, for DD, the choice has been a full-pay private liberal arts school with an engineering program (but not a high-profile "pipeline" school), because Reasons. For DS, it's going to be a pure engineering program, but many details TBD. We may well pay less for him than her (boy I hope so) because of the type of schools that do what he wants to do, and I couldn't possibly tell you right now which type of career path either kid will choose. But it's not about achieving a specific end; its about giving my kids the widest possible opportunities to pursue what most interests them, along with (I hope) the ability to use those opportunities wisely.
*DH and I have impressive titles but not the power/fame sort of paths. We have both been driven by intellectual curiosity/escape from boredom/not wanting to be poor -- basically, we are geeks, though of different varieties -- so once we got to the career level where we had choice, we chose paths that were personally interesting vs. those that could provide more power or fame or whatever.