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0 pointsvannevar7mo ago0 comments

The analogy of education to housing "bubbles" doesn't work. Housing bubbles are economically destructive because dropping prices induce new sellers to drop their price even further, which reduces the market value for everyone. There is a reinforcement loop.

No such mechanism happens in education, once you have your degree it is yours forever. There is no secondary market. If the value goes down, sure, other people will not pay as much for new degrees, but there's no direct connection between the market value and the tuition. There is no reinforcement loop.

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somenameforme7mo ago

Of course there's a connection. The most realistic reason people go to college is to earn more money later in life. Nobody would ever voluntarily go 6 figures into debt with the understanding that, at the end of it all, the best job they're going to be able to find is to go serve coffee.

And especially in the era of the internet the concept of college being a necessity to educate oneself is rather plainly artificial, and it's also highly debatable whether the current GPA inflated profit motivated degree treadmills that colleges have turned into is even providing a meaningful education.

vannevarOP7mo ago

>Of course there's a connection.

A connection, yes, but not a feedback loop. A drop in the value of a degree does not lead to everyone panic-selling their degree.

What you're describing is simple ROI---as the return on the education investment declines, people reduce their investment in degrees. But falling tuition does not further reduce the ROI, as in the case of housing where there is a general expectation of appreciation, and therefore, speculation.

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