Here is a very unpopular idea. We have in America too many colleges and universities, too many professors and too many students. When you compare our higher education industry with that in other advanced industrialized countries, it is so obvious that we have a college 'bubble' that is probably going to burst along with the already deflated housing bubble. Result: a lot of empty, abandoned college buildings and even whole campuses. What else are they good for?
It won't be Carolina, Duke, State, Wake Forest, and Davidson that go down the tubes. They're safe, along with other government schools, like UNC-G and Appalachian. It's going to be the small, liberal-arts colleges like the one I attended in Pennsylvania and the hundreds like them all around the country. Their endowments, such as they are, are shinking, along with the ability of most of their students and families to pay the high tuition and costs associated with private education. They are on the edge and the trendlines in the economy right now are all against them. And the government can't save them all.
Oh, and did I say that health care is also a bubble? I've never seen anyone else describe it as such, but where have you seen all the construction taking place the last five years, other than exurban housing developments? Colleges and hospitals. And we simply can't afford all the money currently going into health care. Period.
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