Instapundit: Beware, the college bubble will soon burst

...I predicted that higher education is in a bubble, one soon to burst with considerable consequences for students, faculty, employers, and society at large.

My reasoning was simple enough: Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. And the past decades’ history of tuition growing much faster than the rate of inflation, with students and parents making up the difference via easy credit, is something that can’t go on forever. Thus my prediction that it won’t.

But then what? Assume that I’m right, and that higher education - both undergraduate and graduate, and including professional education like the law schools in which I teach - is heading for a major correction. What will that mean? What should people do?

Well, advice number one - good for pretty much all bubbles, in fact - is this: Don’t go into debt. In bubbles, people borrow heavily because they expect the value of what they’re borrowing against to increase.

In a booming market, it makes sense to buy a house you can’t quite afford, because it will increase in value enough to make the debt seem trivial, or at least manageable - so long as the market continues to boom.

But there’s a catch. Once the boom is over, of course, all that debt is still there, but the return thereon is much diminished. And since the boom is based on expectations, things can go south with amazing speed, once those expectations start to shift.

Right now, people are still borrowing heavily to pay the steadily increasing tuitions levied by higher education. But that borrowing is based on the expectation that students will earn enough to pay off their loans with a portion of the extra income their educations generate. Once people doubt that, the bubble will burst.

My take: I have no doubt that the college bubble will burst, and that Instapundit has accurately specified the reasons. I would only add that there will be an upside to the subsequent shakeout. Bye-bye to courses in Postmodern Studies, Queer Studies and other abominations that have elevated the status of victimhood and reduced the meaning and value of college degrees.

Persuading students that they are victims of an unjust society is the first step leftist professors use to turn students against their country. The prevalence of such courses is one reason Barack Obama was elected president. Having spent his life among political radicals, he knew that millions of one-time college students who had immersed themselves in courses flagellating America and Americans would rally to a campaign that promised to "transform" the country.

Once the college bubble has burst, the day will come when a graduate who took on $50,000 in debt in pursuit of a degree in Postmodern Studies will ask, "What the hell have I done to my life?"

That will be a good day, not a bad day, for America.