The buyers think what they're buying will appreciate in value, making them rich in the future. The product grows more and more elaborate, and more and more expensive, but the expense is offset by cheap credit provided by sellers eager to encourage buyers to buy.If the housing bubble brought down the economies of the western world, what will happen when the "higher indoctrination bubble" bursts? Overpriced university re-programming has been shifting away from providing a useful education in favour of providing a "consciousness-raising" brainwashing experience -- while simultaneously putting students and families in debt for decades.
Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they're buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn't.
Yes, this sounds like the housing bubble, but I'm afraid it's also sounding a lot like a still-inflating higher education bubble. And despite (or because of) the fact that my day job involves higher education, I think it's better for us to face up to what's going on before the bubble bursts messily." _mjperry_quoting_GlennReynolds
This is a far more destructive process than buying an overpriced home and being foreclosed upon. In the case of institutions of higher indoctrination, it is your mind and the minds of your children that have been fore-closed by dogmatic professors and staff.
Get your download of the report on administrative bloat in higher education: the real reason for high costs in higher education. __ PDF Download __This is the report that is creating such a stir in the media and on university campuses.
Bonus: An interactive US map allowing you to examine the condition of K-12 education state-by-state. via_Jay P Greene
PLUS on the state of US K-12 Ed: 7 MB PDF report card on K-12 American Education via_Jay P Greene
Here is more coverage from US media on administrative bloat and rising tuition costs in US higher indoctrination:
Op-eds
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Baltimore Sun
Indianapolis Star
AOLNews
News
Dallas Morning News
Indianapolis Star
USA Today
Chronicle of Higher Education
Arizona Republic
Arizona Daily Star
Sunshine News
Phoenix Business Journal
AZ Daily Sun
Arizona Capitol Times
Inside Higher Ed
Modesto Bee
Time
Kiplinger’s
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
Baylor Lariat
Columnists / Editorials
The Economist
Forbes
Arizona Republic
Dallas Morning News
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Denver Post
Dallas Morning News
Selected Blogs
Instavision
National Association of Scholars
Instapundit
Cato@Liberty
Phi Beta Cons
Reason Foundation — Nick Gillespie
Reason Foundation — Lisa Snell
George W. Bush Institute
Pelican Institute
MacIver Institute
Nevada Policy Research Institute
The Five Year Party
Carolina Journal
American Council of Trustees and Alumni
The Volokh Conspiracy
Minding the Campus
And here is our rebuttal to ASU’s statement attacking the report. The rebuttal works for most of the issues raised by other universities as well:
Our Rebuttal_JayPGreene
Part of the price inflation is due to an increase in demand. Everyone that goes to high school graduates and goes to collage. It is true that certain occupations need extra education, Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Nurses and a few more unnamed occupations. But there is no reason why a high school student cannot at their second year decided on a career and then tailor the last two years of high school to that occupation. Their is such a shortage of skilled labor in this country, welders, electricians., mechanics... If high schools did their jobs properly higher education would only be needed for very few occupations.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter is going to be a teacher, God bless her. She loves young children and is going into this with her heart. She spent her first two years at an "affordable" community college taking all the pre-requisites. To finish up she is in a quandary - go to a university and saddle herself with debt (and drain my wallet too) or go to a state college of less repute and save a little money. I advised the latter. For one a university degree or not she'd be lucky to get $36,000 a year after 5 years in the classroom and it would take her 30 years to payoff the debt at that rate.
ReplyDeleteI'd argue that Sallie Mae is the driving force behind tuition cost increases. Sallie Mae gives out loans to people with no concept of ROI other than "edumacashion iz good." These students willingly take on debt and then it just gets shunted directly into the pockets of those working at the colleges.
ReplyDeleteTo be sure, those signing for the loan share some blame also, but they're told from kindergarten that more education means more pay even though this is true only in some cases.
Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is due to plentiful available credit chasing things of dubious worth.
The problem is that some professions require a degree, Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, Pharmacist, Accountant, Psycho Therapist... all very specialized, but some of these professions could be handled by magnet high schools that specialize in things such as math, physics, and chemistry or at least the first couple of years could be. Many of my friends that I went to high school with, both male and female, went to UGA, a very expensive school, only to graduate and perform jobs they could have performed straight out of high school. I am sorry to offend but I have found that a degree in most soft subjects is not worth the paper it is printed on.
ReplyDelete