12/28/2010

Education Borrowing Fueling Education Bubble

You know the higher education bubble is getting worse when the federal government makes it easier to borrow the money needed to pay for tuition, books, etc while at the same time driving up the costs of education at a rate well above the rate of inflation. It also leads to far too many college graduates finding themselves deep in debt with a degree that doesn't get them a job in their field of study. And far too often they find themselves in a a job that may not pay well enough to make it possible for them to pay off their loans in a reasonable amount of time.

With seas of federal cash available to pay for college educations, colleges and universities have jacked up their prices to reflect the inflationary nature of all of that education money out there just ripe for the taking. That's why many institutions of higher learning offer courses of study that have very little to do with preparing our youth for life in the real world. A prime example are all those courses or majors that end in the word “Studies”, such as “Women's Studies”, “African American Studies”, “Gay Native American Studies”, and so on. All such courses do is prepare such students how to teach those courses, and that's about it. (A friend of my son studied philosophy at Trinity College with no thought about what he'd do after he graduated. I made the comment that finding a job based solely on that degree would be tough as all of the philosophy companies had a hiring freeze due to the poor economy. He didn't get it.)

The idea that one has to have a college degree to get ahead and be successful has been so oversold over the last few decades that too many people are putting themselves into a deep financial hole with little prospect of climbing out of it during their lifetime or gaining the education they thought they were paying for.