Introduction
Bubbles are a rare but increasingly frequent phenomenon. In their book Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Charles P. Kindleberger and Robert Aliber document the most famous financial bubbles, including
the Dutch Tulip bubble in the 1630s
the South Sea Company bubble in 1720
Japanese and Nordic real estate and assets in the 1980s
the Dotcom bubble in the 1990s1
Recent events will undoubtedly add the recent housing bubble in the U.S. to the list. We argue that higher education in the United States is experiencing a bubble as well.
The Case for the Existence of a Bubble in Higher Education
The defining characteristic of a bubble is unsustainable growth that eventually reverses. Bubbles typically arise when uncertainty leads to unsustainable trends,2and we argue that there are two areas in which higher education has experienced what appear
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