Is There a Higher Education Bubble?
Malcolm Harris at N+1 argues that higher education is headed for a popped-bubble reckoning on the order of the recent real estate apocalypse. It’s a tempting analogy–I’veindulged in it myself–but I don’t think Harris gets the bubble equation right.
To be sure, there are many parallels between the modern real estate and higher education industries. Both sell expensive products (homes, degrees) that are signals and sources of middle class prosperity. People who own both are seen as society’s winners, solid citizens with tangible assets. People who own neither are vulnerable and adrift.
In both industries, prices have shot upward on trajectories that far outstrip the growth of inflation and personal income. Both enjoy huge, politically bulletproof subsidies in the form of genrous tax preferences and goverment grants that are meant to stimulate consumption. In both cases, the epic upward march of prices
