I just want to note, as Brown grad (he specifically points to Brown rather randomly), that unless your parents are "rich" but won't give you any money, you will never have 100k in debt from Brown or any "elite" school. That's just not how it works. Now I'm not saying you don't leave with debt--most of my friends have 20k or so in debt. I have about 9k, but that not the radically high number that is being quoting. The only person I know who has a huge amount of debt is from a family who has the money to pay full tuition (retirement funds, home equity, savings, etc) but would not pay a dime for their child's education. Now, maybe that's their right, but that friend (and former roommate) is the only person I know who graduated with such serious debt that they'd go to San Jose state for grad school (although he ended up with the mindset that what's the difference between 100k in debt and 250k and is getting a masters in Great Britain before likely going on to to law school).

The problem is not the ultra-elite schools--Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, Williams, Brown, etc--with large endowments and need-based financial aid. The problem is the private schools in the middle, places that charge 50k a year but don't have generous aid programs. If your choice is between your state's university and Lehigh or GWU and you don't have money, by all means take his advice. But if you don't have money, and you can get in to Brown et al, then go. It is a deal. I grew up in an incredible working class family, and I had to pay Brown $650 a semester, my father had to pay about the same amount, and I graduated with 10k in debt...I did alright and hadn't won any fancy college scholarships.

As for his larger claim that graduate school trumps undergraduate in employers minds, I think that is true only up to a point. The rankings of graduate schools across subject are radically different, and graduate school can have a lot more to do with circumstance. My wife is working at X, so I had to go to Y, I choose to do Y part-time because I love my job, I wanted to be a lawyer in Iowa so I went to Iowa state even though I got in to Harvard (know someone who did this), etc. But, the signal of what undergraduate school you went to is pretty clear and strong in most employers mind. I'm not under the delusion that Brown taught me much, that I could not have learned anywhere else, but the school you go to sends a strong economic signal about your abilities merely due to the admissions gateway itself. Now, there are special cases where you find yourself in your 20s and all that, but to many employers, being organized and "smart" enough high school so that Brown, Yale, Williams, UChicago accept you, is a relative indication of your abilities, even if you went somewhere less prestigious for grad school.

Most importantly, though, on this second thought, is that the cases are not as clear cut as the author suggests. Signaling and employment are complicated, and they don't boil down to any simple formula like undergraduate reputation < graduate reputation or vice versa.