In 1982 an American college student with the maximum Pell Grant could pay for tuition by working 16 hours a week year-round (or a full-time job in the summer). Today, Pell Grant and wage levels lag behind the exorbitant cost of being at college.  The same college student would have to work 35 hours a week year-round or more than 20 hours a day(!) at a low-wage summer job. So much for students paying their way through college without relying on loans, and so much the worse for those many potential students being priced out of a college education.

There is every sign of this being a bubble, and bubbles burst.  Universities and colleges have been competing, not on academic excellence, but on “facilities”, that is, gyms, sports stadiums, theatres, food halls, laboratories etc.  These need money, and a lot of them are unnecessary to an education.  A Bunsen burner is a Bunsen burner, and gold plating it does nothing for science.  Universities are not like offices or factories, which can usually be put to other uses if the firm goes bust.  They are useless, except as places of learning, but they are being run as businesses, with the bosses (administrators) paying themselves handsomely, and skimping on the teaching.  This whole edifice is quite likely to collapse, leaving the kids of rich parents continuing to enjoy the facilities of Harvard and Yale, but excluding those unable to pay.  It is a betrayal of our young people.  As it is many young people come out of universities having learned next to nothing, but unaware of the fact.

Answer: fire half the administrators, declare a moritorium on capital expenditure, and concentrate on academic excellence and good teaching.  (I don’t see it happening until there is a wave of bankruptcies).