Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion more on "Tiger Mom"...

Anything? How much time do you spend honing your writing skills when you get an engineering degree? (I don't actually know this. I'm just guessing that it isn't that much time.)

And these figures assume that current trends continue... which, clearly, they cannot. The market is already pushing back.

Colleges got into an arms race with each other, based on more buildings and expensive amenities, fueled by expanding debt, which could only be repaid by the constant expansion of the student body, and its willingness to take on increasing debt that cannot be discharged. Obviously, both of these forces would have to reach a limit. The business model was unsustainable.

The important thing, though, is that the school presidents all enjoy seven-figure salaries and generous severance packages as they're driving their institutions over the fiscal cliff.

I used my engineering degree to get into law school.

And I really dislike writing.

I will note that the demand for debt from consumers is basically infinite.

The problem is that only *some* people will be willing to take on an infinite amount of debt.

For example, one of my law school roommates, who, between two years of Harvard grad school and three years of Duke law school, managed to actually max out the amount of money that he was allowed to borrow.

He would have kept borrowing more, but he hit the ceiling.

So, part of the issue is that the amount is capped.

If the email skills of some of my peers are anything to go by... none whatsoever.

There's always a cap, because at some point the lender loses confidence in the borrower to repay, and if the lender doesn't lose confidence quickly enough, default. It would be somewhat difficult to keep up with the interest payments on $infinity, nevermind pay down the principle.

Otherwise, you can't expand the student body AND increase their debt load, because those two forces work against each other.

This is the United States federal government we are talking about.

An entity that issues as much debt as it wants to and poofs billions of dollars into existence on a regular basis.

I know because I watch them poof the money into existence and then I watch the stock market go parabolic.

I also watch money being poofed into existence and funneled into my office on a regular basis because I sign the poofed checks.

Key word being "as much as it wants." It's being run by a body so committed to limiting debt that it passed its own debt cap on itself, enforced by automatic spending cuts so dramatic it would NEVER ACTUALLY allow them to actually happen, cross their hearts. Because that worked out so well for Dr. Strangelove.

Also, nobody beats them in an arms race.

My point is that the federal government is the *source* of the college arms race.

Massive amounts of debt that has no business existing in the first place are being provided to colleges and universities through students.

There are plenty of private organizations all too happy to provide college debt, thanks to the recent changes in bankruptcy laws that render the debt inescapable. They just do so at higher rates of return than the government is currently charging. The market responds rationally to the cheaper rate.