Several times on this website have addressed issues relating to higher education. Among other things I have suggested we have in recent decades overemphasized the need for a college/university education. That we need to do a better job of encouraging alternatives to a four year college/university degree. Such as trade schools and community colleges.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not against higher education. I have a PhD and two Master’s degrees. I had the privilege of teaching a couple classes as an adjunct professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. Most of my congregants either have a PhD or are working on one.
But we need to be honest. We have too many colleges and universities. Even humble Louisiana – not normally known as a center for higher education – has too many for its current population. Not to mention there are questions about the current cost of higher education as well as the quality thereof.
Michael Barone chimes in with a recent article on “Higher Education Bubble Poised to Burst”:
Imagine that you have a product whose price tag for decades rises 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.
Sound like the housing market? Yes, but it also sounds like what Glenn Reynolds, creator of instapundit.com, writing in The Examiner, has called “the higher education bubble.”
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.
At the risk of veering into partisan politics one must wonder why President Obama has emphasized so much the need for America to have more college graduates.
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