Consider the many amazing institutions in other countries that either have no tuition or very reasonable tuition as an alternative if she doesn’t get into the best of the best in US. Even with crazy costs, Stanford/Harvard/MIT/etc are generally worth it for the right degree.

>Stanford/Harvard/MIT

That's a good solution, everyone should just study there.

That’s not what I was saying at all - if you get the chance to study there, you should, otherwise there are amazing institutions that don’t require going into debt that one may not be able to pay off.

If you can afford to sock away the money then you should. You may ultimately pay more than other people, or you may not, but you will have the comfort of knowing that she can afford to go to college without taking on a lot of debt.

This is one of the worst results. No one is sure what will happen in 10 years time. Take out debt and hope for another writeoff? Its like Reagan's immigration amnesty.

I’m contributing to my niece’s 529—worst case scenario being she doesn’t need as much as her family has saved, and any excess can be transferred to another family member or taken out for a relatively modest penalty. And, I assume if there’s a major restructuring of college costs over the next 20 years, more flexibility will be introduced for getting money out as well.

You can use Roth IRA contribution principal to pay for college. Then if you aren't limited to using it for education if you need a plan B.