Of course it's a bubble. Just like the housing crisis, there's been a huge amount of speculation when it comes to higher education. The belief is that if we gi

Of course it's a bubble. Just like the housing crisis, there's been a huge amount of speculation when it comes to higher education. The belief is that if we give out cheap and easy loans to as many students as we can they will not only be able to easily pay those loans back but also become much more valuable in the long term, just like all the McMansions in the housing market. The Universities respond to all this easy cash by raising their prices to try to distinguish themselves from other Universities and the students respond to this by accepting an ever increasing debt load because of their undying faith that they will land a high paying job when they graduate. The Universities aren't on the hook for these loans, which makes it even worse than the housing crisis. The students are on the hook, but they won't be able to pay them back, which means it will fall on the US taxpayer's shoulders to bail everybody out. The solution would be to stop issuing these cheap loans to all but the most qualified students entering into the most useful fields (science/engineering and not art-history/sports medicine). Once the money party stops, Universities will be forced to lower their prices, and cheaper education will become more prevalent as smaller institutions scramble to fill the huge increase in demand for cheap, effective education. But no, we have a "right to education." Sigh.