One thing to keep in mind also is the general availability of information these days. A $40k a year college needs to have something
very unique to offer a liberal arts student for it to pay off. For just about anything other than professions with mandatory qualifications like law, aviation, medicine or whatever, it now makes much more sense to go to an inexpensive college and focus on lots of extracurricular DIY.
If you're interested in journalism, for example, go and take a look at
Corey Spring at Newsvine, currently a senior at Ohio State and already a fairly well known journalist. Do you think anyone will ever care what school he graduated from?