“It's a secured debt [CDOs] “It's built on things like C-rated mortgages,” Wesley Yang said in a 2022 conversation with John Saylor. “These people, their job, as a rating agency, is to say everything is A-plus.”
Yang and Saylor weren't talking about CDOs stuffed with subprime loans and fraudulently disguised as safe. That ultimately led to the housing market collapse in 2008. Rather, they were talking about the medical literature on gender and how it is clearly fraudulent. , and more broadly about what has become of our universities. For many people working in non-financial fields, “debt collateral” is synonymous with “a college degree,” and in this case, collateral is financial future and freedom. And like previous housing market bubbles, the higher education bubble is poised to burst.
Beginning in the 1960s, American universities began admitting more students, and between 1965 and 1975, the number of students and professors hired to teach them doubled. “It was as if it took him 100 years for the United States to build his one system of higher education, and then in 10 years he built his second system of the same size,” Lyell said. Dr. Asher spoke in his 2022 micro-documentary. Why have universities become cults?. The fact that many of these new students and professors saw the academy as a hub of activity rather than education also undermined the university's true mission and preservation of its social functions.
To make matters worse, America's higher education system has doubled in size, admitting students who should never have enrolled, let alone graduated.
A recent meta-analysis of undergraduates found that the average IQ of undergraduates has declined rapidly over the years, with recent data suggesting that the average undergraduate IQ is now on par with the average IQ of the general population. It has become. The authors of this study explain:[t]The decline in student IQ is an inevitable result of the past 80 years of academic progress. Today, it is more common to graduate from college than it was to graduate from high school in the 1940s. ”
Many incompetent but qualified students end up becoming university administrators because they have nowhere else to go in the private sector. A 2021 study found that between 1976 and 2018, full-time faculty grew by 92%, students by 78%, and “full-time administrators and other professionals employed by these institutions… increased by 164% and 452%, respectively. Today, many of these administrators lead our universities with empty or fraudulent academic credentials. The most notable example is Claudine Gay, former president of Harvard University. She was appointed after writing only 12 books, and she resigned after several plagiarisms were revealed.
The declining cognitive abilities of college students have significantly reduced the communication power of college degrees, while the cost of obtaining a degree has increased dramatically thanks to an increase in unnecessary administrators. In fact, historical data shows that the cost of attending college far exceeds the rate of inflation. The average annual tuition at a four-year public institution was $302 in 1966, but in 2019 dollars that would cost him $2,386. But by 2019, average tuition was $9,349, nearly four times as much, even when all data points are adjusted for inflation.
These increased costs impact many students who view college as a necessary part of their career. As Neetu Arnold explained in his 2021 NAS report, Sale end price: “Young Americans paying off student loans are delaying personal milestones like buying a home, getting married, and having children…Young Americans are taking on debt rather than building a future for themselves and their country. And America's young people continue to rack up that debt. As of 2023, Americans currently owe $1.766 trillion in student loan debt. Total student loan debt nearly doubled between 2011 and 2022.
The government has not addressed the devaluing of university degrees, the bloated administration, the soaring tuition costs and widespread borrowing that have led to the student debt crisis. Instead, the government is effectively bailing out universities in the same way it bailed out banks. The Biden administration announced $4.9 billion in student debt relief in 2024, but that will have little impact on the $1.76 trillion total. Student loan cancellation does not, and is not intended to, solve the underlying problems that caused the debt crisis. The purpose is to divert attention from the universities that pandered to voters and deceived them.
Serious reforms are needed, but too few are being implemented, and like the housing bubble, the higher education bubble will eventually burst. The question is not when or how it suddenly happens. If it happened suddenly, those who committed fraud would plead not guilty, authorities who should have known better would plead ignorance, and millions of Americans in debt would be left with no jobs, future housing, etc. , will be left with an unfulfilled dream of a happy family. last time.
Photo: Jared Gould — Adobe — Text to Image
