[PebblesRox]

I'm afraid your bubble metaphor is too subtle for me. Educations aren't tradeable investments like houses and shares, so the value of an education does not depend on its potential selling price. Can you explain more about how you think the education bubble will collapse? What do you think will happen to tuition prices in the future? Will universities go out of business? Will the collapse benefit students, or will it harm them? How?

[robotrout]

I don't know. I can predict doom, without knowing how it will come about. Nassim Taleb gets away with it, so why not me?

I can only say that these price rises seem artificial, by the reasoning I already mentioned. Artificially high prices == bubble, since artificially high (or low) prices are not sustainable.

I fear the collapse will hurt students. If it collapses like a bubble, than it will bring chaos, which can't be good for anybody, students or universities. As to how exactly, I can only guess. Perhaps everybody tries to do the online thing, which, as others have noted, can never be as good as having a flesh and blood professor. Perhaps it just finally rises to the point that people just can't afford it, and the colleges go bust due to lack of students. Perhaps there's a cultural shift away from the notion that college is the most important thing a person can save 20 years of savings for. I don't know, I just see prices that don't reflect reality and fear the worst.