stock_creeper's  Instablog

I have observed that the most popular topics as measured by comments and pageviews are posts that are critical of higher education or student loans, posts that are about IQ or standardized testing, and lastly, Obama's poll numbers. This theory was affirmed when the half-pint Robert Reich published a satrical college commencement speech on Business Insider (or maybe Business Insider syndicated the story) about the bleak propects facing newly minted graduates due to overwhelming student loan debt and low paying jobs. This article garnered over ninety comments (and counting) in just a few hours, well above the average of one to three comments for a typical Business Insider story. Like Paul Krugman, his writing is motivated by a innate contempt for the one percent and republicans and facts are selectively chosen to support his viewpoint rather than present a logical flow. Worst of all, it's not funny.

www.businessinsider.com/the-commencement...

This is nothing new. The left has written about student debt bubbles for years and they keep being wrong. Check out this google search of articles dated between 2005 and 2009 of premature pronouncements of a bubble:

www.google.com/search?q=student+loan+bub...=

The doom & gloom credo is to predict early and predict often.

Technically, any trend with an exponential growth curve will appear like a bubble if viewed from a long enough time frame, including things that can't go negative like compounded interest.

Student loan debt tops one trillion, but in 2011 the average debt per student was only $23,300 (or about the cost of a car, but I don't see the left protesting the auto companies), a far less daunting number than the two to three hundred thousand dollars purported by most blogs.

The proliferation of student loan debt is attributable to leftist efforts to mainstream college education so that it's readily accessible to everyone, whereas in the past college was attended by those who could afford it or were smart enough reap the benefits of it. Nowadays, high school graduates who can't even read their diplomas are attending college, and we're supposed to be surprised when they can't find jobs? Or that fifty percent of college enrollees don't finish, squandering tuition money that could be have put to better use elsewhere? These are people that should have never been admitted to college.

College attendance is surging because in a cutthroat labor market having a degree gives you an edge. Some employers require a degree, even if the job doesn't necessitate it.

The unemployment rate for students with technical degrees like math, science, physics or computer science is substantially lower than the humanities; furthermore jobs requiring technical skills pay much more, too. James Altucher, Robert Reich and numerous other college critics also omit this fact or hide it in a footnote. No one forced you to major in liberal studies, but don't blame the government, the fed, or the one percent when profit motivated employers cant find a use for, say, a history major when Wikipedia can fill that job for free.