The bubble in student loans has nothing to do with education. Institutions are seeing students’ desire for a TV college experience and up-selling them since it can be financed by debt. It’s not higher-education that’s a bubble, it’s a ridiculously high standard of living for 18-22 year old kids on borrowed money student loans and on-campus CC sign-ups that’s causing this.

This is not investment in our future. This is consumption. Dane Cook coming to speak on campus is consumption. A huge fancy gym is consumption. Apartment-style dorms are consumption. Super high-tech classrooms that get used for plain-old lectures are underutilized capacity. Top-of-the-line computers in labs that get used for browsing facebook are consumption.

I graduated in ’08 and most people I know talk endlessly of how much they miss college. They lived well and didn’t work and now they work hard and live poorly. A good-chunk went to grad-school to live the life again after not being happy with life as a 40k entry-level office-drone paying student loans and living in a sh@##y apartment.

All the student-loan boom is is anticipated consumption. That’s it. Nothing to do with education. For a lot of kids it’s simply 4 years of partying/socializing/indulging while also going to school

via Disrupting the Higher Education Bubble | The Big Picture.