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Will Colleges Receive Their Own Rejection Letter?
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By Susan C. Walker
Thu, 19 May 2011 15:30:00 ET |
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Editor's note: Now that the time for college graduation ceremonies is upon us, it's a good time to revisit The Socionomist's article, "Back to the School of Hard Knocks?" This free update first appeared in March 2011.
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If you are the parent of a high school senior or college student, you've probably become wise in the ways of Higher Education, Inc. You know all about college visits, the Common Application, financial aid, early admissions, admit weekends and "senioritis." Perhaps you're a college graduate yourself and believe strongly in training the mind via higher education. More than likely, you agree that having a college degree will help your student go farther in life than not having one.
But not all is as it seems in Ivory Tower world. According to the latest study in The Socionomist, the tables are about to be turned on the industry that sends out acceptance and rejection letters every April.
Alan Hall begins his 10-page study by waving this red flag: "America's higher education business is about to hit a patch of trouble. It is in the late stages of a bubble, one that is credit-fueled, government-supported and widely popular." He goes on to provide a chart (shown here) depicting per capita U.S. college enrollment at its highest level ever, stretching back to the 1940s. But, as the chart also shows, the wave pattern seems to be completing a fifth wave. If you know anything about Elliott wave analysis, you can surmise that the next move will be three waves downward.
Meanwhile, it costs more to attend college -- not just the Ivy League, but public universities as well -- and the flood of students carrying their books through the quad are likely to be there thanks to student loans. Hall points out that this kind of burgeoning debt mirrors what happened in the U.S. housing industry earlier this century.
"Despite record levels of federal debt, the U.S. government continues to encourage people to borrow for an education. AP reported on December 18 that Congress's new $858 billion tax package includes $22.1 billion in tax breaks, deductions and credits for students and their families. This is exactly what it did with housing, to a disastrous end."
That doesn't even account for the massive influx of taxpayer money that supports students at for-profit universities, like DeVry and Capella.
All in all, the bear market picture that Hall paints for the future of higher education is not a portrait that any university president would want to have hanging in the hall. But the main problem is that most institutional educators will not see the change coming.
You can be one of the few who see the change coming, and who understand the information, charts, and other evidence behind the trend. Subscribe to The Socionomist: It's the premier publication of The Socionomics Institute, which studies social mood and its role in cultural, economic and political trends.
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Tags: social mood, socionomics, The Socionomist