Going to a “good school” is overrated. If you want to work at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or get an inside track to certain coveted government posts (Supreme Court clerkships, US Attorneys office for the Southern District of New York) , then yes, those places really only recruit in a handful of elite schools.

Every other workplace, though? Doesn’t matter. Google doesn’t hire software developers based on which school they went to, they hire based on their ability to code and work on a team without being a huge dick. At my own workplace, one of the software developers I worked with didn’t even go to college and he got paid a lot more than I did.

The unspoken problem is that our economy only has “good jobs” for maybe 20% of the workforce. Another 15% of jobs available pay reasonably well but aren’t considered good (plumber, electrician, other blue collar skilled trades), and the rest are various grades of suck with either low pay, bad work conditions, or some unenviable combination of the two.

A degree from an elite college is a shortcut for “good” employers to determine whether that person is intelligent, hardworking, and able to persevere through a turbulent period in life. BUT if you have those traits, it doesn’t really matter which college you went to or even if you went to college. You’ll eventually succeed.

Financial insecurity is not caused by a lack of elite college degrees. It’s caused by an inability to save and invest money wisely. If you derive the vast majority of your income from wages, if you lose your job, it’s catastrophic. Only by setting aside a portion of your wages to build wealth, which is passively earned, can you escape financial insecurity.