….AND I FEEL FINE.
(H/T: Instapundit) Two quotes, actually, with commentary after the second. First:
The most important part of the college bubble story—the one we will soon be hearing much more about—concerns the impending financial collapse of numerous private colleges and universities and the likely shrinkage of many public ones. And when that bubble bursts, it will end a system of higher education that, for all of its history, has been steeped in a culture of exclusivity.
…OK. Works for me.
Here’s the second quote, same source:
Through its “Open Yale” initiative, Yale has been recording its lecture courses for several years now, making them available to the public free of charge. Anyone with an internet connection can go online and watch some of the same lectures I attended as a Yale undergrad. But that person won’t get the social life, the long chats in the dinning hall, the feeling of collegiality, the trips around Long Island sound with the sailing team, the concerts, the iron-sharpens-iron debates around the seminar table, the rare book library, or the famous guest lecturers (although some of those events are streamed online, too).
…on the other hand, that person also won’t get the side-effects from four or more years constant, corrosive personal exposure to a variety of substitute authority figures who generally feel that the United States of America would be just perfect if they could only do to it what Paul Verhoeven did to Starship Troopers (safe link). So I’m going to score that one as a wash.
Moe Lane
I should probably read that book at some point — since I loved the movie so much.
You are in for a big shock. The similarities end at the title
Yeah, I know there are few similarities. I just like giving Moe a hard time about it because he hates that movie more than…..well, pretty much anything else.
A similar issue to keep an eye on is medical education. New schools are popping up like weeds and old schools are expanding their class sizes. Unfortunately the government is not increasing the number of residency spots available. It is possible that in a few years you will have people with 200K of debt from med school but no residency therefore no way to get a job in medicine
If they’ve got the know-how and a… flexible view of the law, I suspect there will be any number of people in the next several years who will be willing to hand them a stack of dollars in exchange for medical service, residency or no.
As long as a bachelors that’s even vaguely related to a given field is a white-collar union ticket, I wouldn’t look for shrinkage in hard science departments beyond the current atrophy.
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The non-sciences are in for a rude awakening.
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Mew