The university bubble is also beginning to burst. Democratising universities has proved an expensive and inefficient way of providing mass higher education. Americans, who led the way, have taken on more than $1 trillion in student debt. But a growing number think that they got poor value for money—taught by PhD students not professors, forced to subsidise expensive research programmes and administrative cadres, and provided, at the end of it all, with a college diploma that no longer automatically brings a desirable job.
