Comments on: Bubbles, bubbles everywhere. http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/bubbles-bubbles-everywhere/ "History is more or less bunk." - Henry Ford, 25 May 1916. Tue, 21 May 2013 21:52:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: VanessaVaile http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/bubbles-bubbles-everywhere/#comment-5154 Sat, 01 Dec 2012 13:48:01 +0000 http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/?p=8911#comment-5154 Student loan debt as part of current higher ed issues (or, if you prefer, gorilla in the room) certainly fits categorizing higher ed bubble as more like the housing one. Housing meets dot.com?

Good but depressing article, Pomp and Exceptional Circumstance: How Students Are Forced to Prop Up the Education Bubble (Boston Review, 11/19/12)

(link courtesy of “those people”)

]]> By: Contingent Cassandra http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/bubbles-bubbles-everywhere/#comment-5147 Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:17:15 +0000 http://moreorlessbunk.wordpress.com/?p=8911#comment-5147 The “college bubble,” to the extent it exists, might be more like the housing bubble than, say, the high-tech/internet business (or another stock) bubble: the basic product is something many people really do need, but poor-quality versions are being offered at inflated prices; unnecessary frills have crept in (while the components of real quality are getting short shrift); and all of the above is being driven in large part by people putting together, and profiting from, questionable loans to make the inflated prices seem affordable, and to a lesser-extent by well-meant but poorly-thought-out government programs that encourage people to try to acquire something commonly seen as part of the American dream despite the inflated prices. MOOCs (or at least what some people hope MOOCs will become) are definitely part of the picture: they supposedly offer another way to produce the basic product more cheaply, and so keep the present flawed system going, rather than rethinking the underlying, flawed structure.

]]>