Summary/Response to The Higher Education Bubble

Summary/Response In Glenn Harlan Reynolds broadside response, The Higher Education Bubble, he writes that the costs of college is rising year after year. Many families are putting themselves into unnecessary debt in order to send their students to college. This pattern has repeated many times throughout the years and Reynolds refers to this as a higher education bubble. Students feel that because everyone else is going into debt it must be okay. In many cases, colleges are not helping the matter. They see that there are those desiring a higher education and are willing to do anything to attain what they (the college) has to offer. By and large they are not improving what they offer. They are not as concerned about the education as they are about the bottom dollar.
According to Reynolds, higher education began around 1088. Before that time education was gained through apprenticeship and on-the-job training. I was surprised by how long higher education has been around. It was interesting to read that those attending were doing so for social connections and not so much for the education itself. Then, after the Civil War, things changed. The Morrill Act was passed and the idea was proposed that our colleges to begin training farmers, mechanics and soldiers instead of lawyers and clergymen. After this act proved to be successful, the policymakers created a GI Bill so that returning GIs would have funds available to them so they could either return to the workplace, or, instead, go to school. This surprised me because I was not aware that this was how the GI Bill was created. I don’t suppose I really had any idea of how it began, but it did surprise me that it was began in this way.
As population grew, so did the enrollment within the colleges. Next came the Pell Grant as well as student loans. Because there was such a huge interest in college, the colleges themselves seized the opportunity to capitalize and began increasing costs but that didn’t hurt