One of the more vital aspects of an American university education will survive even after the current bubble pops: the experience of going away from home to live and learn among hundreds or thousands of other eighteen- to twenty-year-olds.
Sports teams, debating societies, social events — all will continue, even if much of academic life is conducted via a computer in a dorm room. Lecture halls might even survive, with lectures being piped in via satellite. Libraries will disappear or be converted to tennis courts.
The "creative destruction" caused by technology combined with an absurd, unsustainable cost structure will give rise to whole new centers and ways of learning — just as has happened throughout history. We have all forgotten the names of the former great world universities in places like Morocco, Timbuktu, Portugal, Italy, Asia ... the list goes on.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
