What is the best investment, in your opinion? To use this money to pay for your education, so you can conclude a superior course and achieve a higher degree, having access to a wide jobs' market, or to use that money to acquire an apartment, house or piece of land, so you can make a passive income from this?
It brings the following question up: what is more valued in life: to be or to have? Does it make someone fulfilled to have while not being or being without having anything?
In my country university is almost free and the property market is very expensive, luckily this not something people have to choose over here. In case university degrees would be expensive as in USA then I would probably choose an advanced degree over buying a property now. Investing in education is important and is going to pay off in the long run. During university there is usually cheap near campus housing and we don't need our own property. And after graduation we will probably make a lot of more money than we are doing now. This additional income will let us get a bigger loan, so we can still buy the property we like. Another issue we need to keep in mind is the rise of AI, if our advanced degree ensures that we won't be rationalized by AI soon it's another strong argument to keep focusing on education. Or how about a compromise? Buying a smaller apartment instead and going to a cheaper university for our studies? Just because it's not a top 10 university doesn't mean it will be bad education.