The Higher Education Bubble

This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that the economic model that founds the American university system is unsustainable.

Going to college costs too much and does not deliver value for the money. Besides, if it becomes increasingly difficult for students to access the credit market, they will attend schools that they can more easily afford. Thus, higher education is a bubble waiting to burst. Link here.

The article suggests that Humanities departments, the pride of liberal arts education, and also the home of political correctness, will be most threatened.

In time of economic crisis, with university education representing a major investment, students will be less likely to enroll in courses that do not have a practical application.

The financial crisis has shown people the value of courses in economics and finance. You are not going to be able to understand what happened to the markets by using what you learned in French literature class.

We might hope that students also come to reject the kind of indoctrination practiced in so many humanities departments. If they do, those departments will become economically less viable. Would it not be interesting to see political correctness undermined by a marketplace it has strenuously rejected.