I'm sure it depends some on the degree. A very sharp friend of mine got an aeronautical engineeering degree from a good state school. After a few years in industry he went back for a brand-name MBA. He said in 2 years of school, he learned exactly one thing that he couldn't have just figured out via general knowledge and a bit of thinking. [1] He said the real value was in the network he built up, people who would soon be placed in important positions in important companies all over.
And I should add that in an age of increasing inequality, a network with a lot of elite members will increase in value much faster than inflation. So the value of an elite degree might still be a bargain even at the current prices. Which probably explains why there's a lot of bribery, legal and otherwise, by the rich trying to get students into brand-name schools.
[1] For the curious, it was the notion of comparative advantage, which was counterintuitive for me too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage