The always entertaining HowStuffWorks asks the question, "Which economic bubble will be next to burst?"
From tulips to dot-coms to housing, the prices investors pay for some things occasionally get totally out of whack with their intrinsic value. When the bubble pops, blue chips can suddenly turn red. Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) lost far more than 60% of their value in the post-2000 tech wreck. The entire financial landscape turned upside-down last year, and Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) (among others) will never be the same.
So what might be the next asset to suffer an Icarus-like crash? Among the candidates: higher education, in the form of plummeting enrollment. HSW notes that the cost of a college education has soared 440% over the past 25 years, quadrupling the rate of inflation.
"What this means is that millions of college students are entering an extremely tight job market saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in high-interest debt," HSW writes. "That's not the way to start any career. Even graduate and professional degree earners find themselves saddled with debt that they can't possibly repay."
Next year I'll have two kids in college, and I'm certainly feeling the pinch. I don't think we'll see enrollment rates plummet like the market has in the past, down 50% or more -- but I think the costs of a higher education have to level off, or even drop, at some point in the future.
What do you think? Let us know below!
