[byrneseyeview]

That is part of what makes a bubble a bubble. Individual houses have been good investments for particular reasons; individual e-commerce plays or telecom companies made sense in the mid-90's. But when people start calling up their broker to buy the next Internet IPO, or trying to invest in "housing" as a category--or when parents tell their kids to get "A degree," it naturally selects for the worst version of those.

Here are a couple examples:

* http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=...

* http://chronicle.com/article/Many-More-Students-Are/66223/

Thiel's program is more of a signal than anything. I dropped out of college five years ago, and people thought I was crazy. I had lunch a couple months ago with my high school classmates (from a regionally well-regarded prep school), and I'm pretty happy with how my career and prospects stack up.

[jmm]

Thanks. The relationship to the housing bubble is interesting, no doubt. In my mind, no two things have been more connected to class aspirations/freedoms over the last 50 years than home ownership and higher ed. There are class and race issues at play in both cases, which makes new prescriptions pretty tough to make, especially on a political level.

But a problem has been identified here -- too many people are spending too much on money on phantom educational assets. Now the solution -- fewer people should go to college. (Especially expensive low to mid tier schools?) I guess what I was really asking above, is: so what should they do instead? And I'm guessing the answer ain't so pretty, something even more offensive to the idea of the American dream than the analogous housing case, of "sorry, just keep on renting."

[byrneseyeview]

I went to college for a year, and I'm doing just fine without it. That used to be the standard path. There are plenty of well-paying jobs that don't require a degree--many trades pay far better than white-collar jobs, for example, and sales jobs often don't require a degree.

And there's nothing wrong with renting, either. You buy housing as you need it, just like you buy food as you need it--I don't feel ripped off that I eat peaches but don't own an orchard.