By Alan Hall

America’s higher education business has hit a patch of trouble. A massive shift in society’s attitudes toward education is beginning. Educational institutions should soon encounter spectacular challenges to survival.

Signs of Peak Psychology

Society’s feelings about education shift in concert with social mood. As a 1987 report, “Changing Public Attitudes Toward Higher Education,” said:

In the late 1940s … people had no quarrel with colleges. They wanted more of them, they wanted more young people to go, and they admired professors. This approving public attitude … continued into and throughout the Golden Era of higher education (1955–1970) … . The confidence of the general public in colleges and universities … diminished between 1965 and 1985, a period of time in which … the public and elected officials look[ed] critically at higher education.

That bear-market attitude shifted again in the subsequent bull market. Public Agenda’s report on education, “Great Expectations,”

By Terry Connelly

In the hours following the February 20 release of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee January 2013 meeting, US equity markets dropped over one percent reversing a steady upward climb that had persisted since the swerve around the "Fiscal Cliff" at the start of the year (except for a brief flutter down in early January when the minutes of their previous meeting in December were released).

What is it about Fed minutes that give “commentators” (many of whom are notorious short sellers) ammunition to talk down the markets so they can shake stocks out of weak hands and then buy them cheaper? In this case, it was the “revelation” that there were voices on the Fed that had doubts about the cost-benefits of the Quantitative Easing program of $85 billion per month government debt and mortgage bond purchases that the Central Bank has undertaken to stimulate extension of cheap credit to businesses and householders and thereby encourage hiring.

Given that the Fed’s QE