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Tuesday, April 6, 2010

On the Bubble... College

The book is a helpful guide to savings, insurance and so forth with simple ratios to fit your circumstances.  When it addresses education debt, the author discusses the "higher education bubble" and recommends making higher education consumer decisions with a financial rationale rather than emotions.  Ohio State's recent 8.4% tuition increase had me poking around for more information on the bubble, with all of my Indoctrination U opinions aside, enjoy...
 
 
The Evolution of the College Dorm
 
 
Popping the Higher-Education Bubble
A new strategy to improve college access while reducing the taxpayer burden.
Excerpt: Over the past decade, federal spending on student aid has grown by 99 percent. But, as these economists would predict, college costs continue to rise. Since 1982, college tuition has increased by 439 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and twice the rate of increase for medical care. The College Board reports that the total costs of attending four-year private and public universities this year were $35,600 and $26,700 respectively.
 
Bursting the Higher Ed Bubble
Excerpt: ...From an economic point of view, in other words, a college degree costs more and more and returns less and less. Kind of like a hot stock with a price-to-earnings ratio of 32, it's a prelude to a crash.
...

Over the longer run, however, universities, like other troubled institutions, will have to rethink the fundamentals of their work. Why does it take four years to complete a BA degree? Maybe liberal arts studies make more sense later in life?

But this rethinking should not stop with the universities. The entire American education establishment needs reform.

Maybe tough high school exit exams would serve the needs of employers who currently insist on a BA not for its own sake but as proof that a student was not too lazy or aimless to get one. Indeed, it could be that when the job market attaches less value to a piece of parchment, universities will at last lay aside their often ugly political preoccupations and rediscover their true mission: the pursuit of knowledge as a good in itself.

 
 
Europe's Education Crisis: College Costs Soar
 

Is Higher Education the Next Big Bubble?
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PIIGS AND SPACE (or Pearls to PIIGS and Chinese Family Planning in Space)

Sovereign Danger (PIIGS)
Excerpts: Portugal on Tuesday became only the latest of the so-called PIIGS — Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain — to be hit by speculation that it might soon fail. Greece is already technically in default on its debts, and has had to make humiliating requests for aid from the EU, U.S. and IMF.
....Meanwhile, total U.S. debt is set to swell from about 60% of GDP just three years ago to 115% or higher by 2014, according to IMF estimates. "For all intents and purposes," says Cato Institute economist Daniel J. Mitchell, "America is on a path to become a European-style welfare state."
France, Germany agree on eurozone, IMF bailout
The Czar Wars, Episode I, Scene 10, Cash for Clunkers Mojo
Excerpt: Funds for Foreign Sovereignty (IMF bailout early bird bonus for subordination to the New World Order))
China's New Requirement for Women in Space: Married with Children
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