The issue of whether to attend the more expensive university or the less expensive university comes up a lot. This is a very common choice to be made.
Students often under-appreciate their in-state public universities. Lots of other students are going there from their high school. It might be perceived as boring. However, we as parents cannot expect our 17 year old or 18 year old high school seniors to understand the consequences of taking on debt, or of using up the college fund and finding themselves unable to afford graduate school (such as a master’s degree which are often not funded, or any other unfunded graduate program).
Also, there is some flexibility in most programs. If a student is particularly interested in a particular sub-field of their major or a related field, they can often take some extra courses in that sub-field. This will depend upon the course being offered by whatever university they attend. A closely related major plus extra courses (whether an official minor or not) can often be good for starting a career – for example I started off as a software engineer in spite of having a degree in mathematics (with multiple CS courses just taken as “something I found interesting”).
My wife and I set a hard limit on the cost of university and insisted that the kids had to stick to it. This was what we could handle without any debt at all (with a margin just in cases things went for 5 years, but we did not admit this to the kids).
My oldest was not happy. Two of the schools that she was accepted to (NEU and BU) did not fit the budget. She went somewhere that did meet the budget, and four years later graduated with no debt (after ironically switching to a major that neither NEU nor BU offer – large animals are not common on university campuses in a big city). Then she graduated and got a “dream job” that she absolutely loved, that led to a second job, that helped her with her applications to a dream graduate program (she is currently studying for a DVM – and will probably specialize in large animals). That first “dream job” was both great fun and got her working with large animals in a very good environment for her. But it paid badly – she could only take it because she had no debt at all. She has more recently thanked me for not letting her take on debt for her bachelor’s degree.
There are significant advantages of having a student graduate with no debt. One is that the student is likely be be able to be self sufficient sooner after graduation. Also some job opportunities might be available for a recent graduate with no debt that would be tougher to handle if the student does have debt.
Depending upon major there can also in some cases be an advantage if the student graduates with a bachelor’s degree and with the parents still able to help them with a subsequent graduate degree.
To add: Students also frequently change their major. If a student wants golf management right now, this does not necessarily guarantee that they will still want it four years from now. Sports management plus an internship or summer job at a golf course might be a reasonable option. But a student starting off with this might end up with a major in environmental sciences, or marketing, or finance, or something entirely different. We all learn and grow as we make through university and life, and many of us change our major along the way.
But yes, “cost versus university and program” is a very common issue.
And different families might have very different financial constraints.
And I think that this can be a tough decision for many of us.