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The Higher Education Bubble

From National Review Online.

"Imagine that you have a product whose price tag for decades has risen faster than inflation. But people keep buying it because they’re told that it will make them wealthier in the long run. Then, suddenly, they find it doesn’t. Prices fall sharply, bankruptcies ensue, great institutions disappear."

...

"Government-subsidized loans have injected money into higher education, as they did into housing, causing prices to balloon. But at some point people figure out they’re not getting their money’s worth, and the bubble bursts."

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"Is our students learning?” George W. Bush once asked, and the evidence for colleges points to no."

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"Students are no longer taught the basics of literature, history, or science. ACTA reports that most schools don’t require a foreign language, hardly any require economics, American history and government “are badly neglected,” and schools “have much to do” on math and science."

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"People are beginning to note that administrative bloat, so common in government, seems to have become especially egregious in colleges and universities. Somehow previous generations got by and even prospered without these legions of counselors, liaison officers, and facilitators. Perhaps we can do so again."

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"...it’s becoming increasingly clear that college doesn’t make sense for everyone. Some simply lack the necessary verbal and math capacity. Others are interested in worthy non-college careers like carpentry.

Still others wonder whether the four-year residential college is worth the investment when you can spend much less on two years in community college and then transfer to a four-year school."

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"As often happens, success leads to excess. America leads the world in higher education; yet there is much in our colleges and universities that is amiss and, more to the point, suddenly not sustainable. The people running America’s colleges and universities have long thought they were exempt from the laws of supply and demand and unaffected by the business cycle. Turns out that’s wrong."

My own two cents on the college issue:
College Degrees More Expensive, Worth Less in Job Market
Plan B--Skip College
7 Reasons Not to Send Your Kid to College
Rethink the Value of College
The College Conundrum

Posted by Cute at 8:34 PM

Labels: education/career, financial (non-tax)