Colleges the Next Bubble?

This piece on MSNBC is not the first time this thought has come up around my parts, but it is gives flesh to the fears. Historically, local community colleges and cheaper public institutions actually can see increases in the number of students during a financial crisis. But expensive private institutions are another story.

IWU's board is financially conservative, so the stock market decline will hurt us less than many other places, but it does hurt. We will have to see whether it becomes really hard to get student loans in the Spring and Fall, above the $10,000 a year the government offers. Let's just say that while IWU is less expensive than most private institutions of our sort, it's over double that when you include housing and such.

Professor Wilbur Williams has long decried the amount of debt our students are racking up, how it is almost impossible for some of them to go into ministry because they can't find a church that pays enough to pay off their student loans. We may be about to see a correction in that market!

And what of our adult programs? Did I hear just this week that GM is suspending funds for education? I know health care for their retirees is about to turn into $3000 a year and good luck. As a joke I told my parents they should vote for Obama :-)

IWU is planning to build a new dorm and to open up dozens of new adult sites. What will come of these plans if the college bubble begins to burst?

IWU's MDiv, currently pending official accreditation approval, would be very inexpensive if we can go ahead with the tuition and scholarships that we've talked about (no comment on specifics :-). It might actually do even better in hard times than it would have, although for very unfortunate reasons! As for the building we were hoping for...

Hard financial times may be ahead for the private college, and we may see some end up closing or consolidating. I sure hope not. And I'm certainly not longing for the days like my grandfather had at Frankfort Pilgrim College during the Great Depression, where sometimes his pay was watered down soup in the cafeteria.