Yet another economic bubble may be poised to pop and as college students, we’re at its epicenter. They call it the Education Bubble ‘ more specifically, the Higher Education Bubble.

Since 1978, tuition has increased tenfold. Home prices only quadrupled during this period, yet the housing market crash triggered a global recession.

The health care debate rhetoric emphasized fiscal issues, and many argued that the previous system was unsustainable. This concern, however, is dwarfed by those of skyrocketing college tuition costs, which have increased twice as fast as that of health care during the same period.

In newspapers across the country, op-eds have questioned whether college is worth the investment. With the $200,000 needed for education at an elite private institution, an entrepreneur could easily start their own business ‘ maybe even two or three if the first few fail.

To make things worse, earning your first degree isn’t nearly as useful in the job market as it once was. We’ve all heard that a bachelor’s degree now is roughly equivalent to a high school diploma of yesteryear ‘ the principle of supply and demand at work. But even if a degree isn’t worth what it used to be, a classic liberal arts interdisciplinary education taught by enthusiastic professors that create a welcoming academic environment can do wonders to foster original thinking. But now, that sort of education is threatened. Emphasis on pre-professional degrees is an emphasis on institutionalized thinking. But even as a liberal arts degree decreases in marketability, the experience of a liberal arts education retains it intrinsic value.

The pin slowly approaching the Higher Education Bubble is easy to vilify, especially when the class of emerging institutions is known as ‘for-profit colleges.’

It’s plainly obvious that the needs of students are not aligned with for-profit colleges, which are mainly focused on, well, generating profits for their executives. While legal disputes pass through our court system and legislators are slowly placing regulations on these institutions (such as DeVry and ITT Technical Institute), the demand for undergraduate degrees is so enormous that, as a society, we’ve begun to rely on them.

For-profit colleges can generate massive amounts of revenue by being dishonest about their school financing options. Students are encouraged to take out large student loans to pay for their education ‘ hoping that their investment will pay off ‘ just as first-time home owners took out large loans to pay for their extravagant homes that they thought would increase in value.

What’s worse is that you can walk away from a mortgage, but you can’t walk away from a student loan.

Bubbles pop when people start to catch on. Judging by the flurry of aforementioned op-eds this summer and the softening of student loan demand, it seems like people are catching on. Once people become less optimistic about college as their ticket to future prosperity and stop taking out loans, tuition costs will drop, leaving those who have taken out large loans with enormous debt.

Clearly, reform in higher education is necessary. Such reforms are being discussed in the public sphere, mostly among intellectuals, professors and college administrators. But among those with legitimate political power, reform in secondary education is certainly not on top of any agendas.

However, as college students, we’re all painfully aware that procrastination usually isn’t the best strategy. You can’t avoid failing that painful 10-page term paper or final exam by procrastinating, and you can’t prevent an economic bubble from bursting by procrastinating either.