The Bubble in Higher Education

It's always frustrating when an article delves into an interesting point and a decent conclusion, but gets there through incorrect thinking.

This MarketWatch story is a perfect example.  The author insists that college just *has* to get cheaper.  It's inevitable!  At a certain point, things well level out.  He concludes that for people who would be in college in 20 years (.i.e. those being born today), college will be affordable.

The author doesn't go into the mechanics of why the rising cost of college won't last forever.  It's a classic bubble.  The government has incentivized loads of young people to take on piles of debt in exchange for a college degree.  Once creditors have a hard enough time getting their money back on these poor loans, they will have to stop lending.  Unfortunately, this lender is mainly the federal government.  Government's overbearing role in the higher education system has led to some serious overinvestment in education, and at some point this will be corrected.

It's not that there is just some mystical economic law that predicts all overbuying must end.  In this case, we have a bubble.