Is the cur­rent ‘value’ of higher edu­ca­tion arti­fi­cially inflated and unsus­tain­able? In other words, could higher edu­ca­tion be the next ‘bub­ble to burst’? The Chron­i­cle of Higher Edu­ca­tion looks at some of the early warn­ing signs that seem to be sug­gest­ing so, and offers a cou­ple of solu­tions to this appar­ently loom­ing crisis.

Over the past 25 years, aver­age col­lege tuition and fees have risen by 440 per­cent — more than four times the rate of infla­tion and almost twice the rate of med­ical care. […]

Mean­while, the mid­dle class, which has paid for higher edu­ca­tion in the past mainly by tak­ing out loans, may now be pre­cluded from doing so as the pri­vate student-loan mar­ket has all but dried up. In addi­tion, endow­ment cush­ions that allowed col­leges to engage in steep tuition dis­count­ing are gone. Declines in hous­ing val­u­a­tions are mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for fam­i­lies to rely on home-equity loans for col­lege financ­ing. Even when the equity is there, par­ents are reluc­tant to fur­ther lever­age them­selves into a future where job secu­rity is uncertain.

Con­sumers who have ques­tioned whether it is worth spend­ing $1,000 a square foot for a home are now ask­ing whether it is worth spend­ing $1,000 a week to send their kids to college.