{"id":3036,"date":"2011-08-11T09:16:46","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T15:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3036"},"modified":"2011-08-11T10:26:17","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T16:26:17","slug":"higher-ed-bubble-goes-mainstream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3036","title":{"rendered":"“Higher Ed Bubble” Goes Mainstream"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another article on the “higher education bubble<\/a>” (think housing bubble, but with college degrees) from that screaming right-wing rag The<\/em> Christian Science Monitor. <\/em>(That was meant as sarcasm.)<\/p>\n

A college degree once looked to be the path to prosperity. In an article<\/a> for TechCrunch<\/a><\/em>, Sarah Lacy<\/a> writes, “Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe<\/em>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Administrative bloat” is real. At many big universities, the administrators now outnumber the teaching faculty. <\/a><\/p>\n

At the other end of the spectrum, the small liberal-arts college that I attended has about the same number of students than it did a few years ago, but it now seems to require more deans and assistant deans to operate.<\/p>\n

At least Reed College<\/a> has not wasted money on big football stadiums full of empty seats<\/a> like so many universities.<\/p>\n

Universities keep raising tuition. Students get easy, taxpayer-guaranteed loans to pay that tuition, because a college degree is a Good Thing.<\/p>\n

Can’t pay off the loan?<\/em> Too bad. Not even personal bankruptcy will make it go away\u2014the banks saw to it that the law was written that way. And no one can foreclose on your bachelor’s or master’s degree.<\/p>\n

So what if people stop climbing on this particular merry-go-ground? What happens to all those assistant deans and the big, empty football stadium then? What happens to all my friends trying to get teaching jobs? What happens to me hoping that someone will adopt my book as a class text? What happens to my publisher?<\/p>\n

The linked Tech Crunch<\/em> article is even more hard-hitting.<\/a><\/p>\n

Next thing, National Public Radio will discover this issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another article on the “higher education bubble” (think housing bubble, but with college degrees) from that screaming right-wing rag The Christian Science Monitor. (That was meant as sarcasm.) A college degree once looked to be the path to prosperity. In an article for TechCrunch, Sarah Lacy writes, “Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-3036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-education"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-MY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2585,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2585","url_meta":{"origin":3036,"position":0},"title":"The Higher-Ed Bubble","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Talk of the \"higher-education bubble\" seems to be increasing. This short article from a North Carolina-based think tank\u00a0 pretty well sums it up: Like the nation\u2019s housing bubble, which eventually burst, the college bubble is caused by a number of factors. But the biggest force is, as my colleague George\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4220,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4220","url_meta":{"origin":3036,"position":1},"title":"The Potential Strength of a Liberal Arts Degree","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I have written here before about the Higher Education Bubble. Related to that perception, you hear a lot of people devaluing education in the humanities and arts. High-profile news stories about graduates with degrees in, for example, film studies and a big debt load did not help. But here is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"education\"","block_context":{"text":"education","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=education"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2283,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2283","url_meta":{"origin":3036,"position":2},"title":"‘Academically Adrift’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It is probably no surprise to a lot of us in higher education that \"45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.\" (Lest I be accused of America-bashing, in talking with international\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"education\"","block_context":{"text":"education","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=education"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":296,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=296","url_meta":{"origin":3036,"position":3},"title":"Can you be a Druid\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 30, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Can you be a Druid and an Episcopalian? The controversy over \"Pagan\" elements on an official Episcopal Church Web site and the husband-and-wife clergy connected with them continues to bubble. Christianity Today's blog has their bishop's statement: the situation is \"extremely serious,\" but there is no rush to the stake,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1153,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1153","url_meta":{"origin":3036,"position":4},"title":"Concentration and Its Enemies — II","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I blogged recently on concentrating on one's work in an online world ... wait, I have to check some blogs ... OK, I'm back.At John Tierney's blog the discussion continues. All sorts of perspectives:Fortunately, I am able to focus, but one of the reasons is because I have schizophrenia, although\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1303,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1303","url_meta":{"origin":3036,"position":5},"title":"Don’t Visualize, Organize!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"That is the takeaway message from Barbara Ehrenreich's new book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.Like much of Ehrenreich's writing, it is fueled by righteous anger.First, as a breast cancer patient, she is disgusted by the happy-face positive thinking of what she calls \"pink ribbon\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0805087494","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3036"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3040,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3036\/revisions\/3040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}