The problem facing American colleges and universities is larger than even the term “bubble” implies. A bursting bubble would force change on the more than four thousand postsecondary institutions in the United States, but something even more destructive is going to hit higher education, probably at the same time.
Compare college to housing for a minute. The housing market collapsed when people began to realize that the houses they wanted to buy weren’t worth the prices that were being offered—nowhere near those prices, in fact. But people still want those houses; the massive adjustment that the country is going through is about price, not about the nature of housing itself.
In the case of higher education, the product, or at least the method of its delivery, may no longer be what most students and their parents want or are willing
Get access to this article, plus the entire archive, by subscribing.