Irony alert: Another professor departs academia to focus on teaching

The latest example, Sebastian Thrun leaving Stanford for Udacity, comes via Glenn Reynolds.

As I recall, Edward Tufte, author of the wonderful book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, stopped lecturing at Yale decades ago so that he could "spend more time teaching."
Now Tufte tours the country teaching his one-day course, Presenting Data & Information. My father took it about 20 or 30 years ago and loved it.

Just more evidence of what Glenn calls the higher education bubble. I keep asking academic types whether they're concerned about such a bubble. Amazingly, most have never heard the term.

The great secular faith of our age: "education is the key to economic growth"

Most politicians keep repeating it, so the idea must still resonate with lots of voters. But it's not true.

via Tim Black, from his interview with professor Alison Wolf, author of Does Education Matter?

The looming "education bubble": not on radar screen for Towson U. prof or D42 state senate candidates

At the District 42 state senator debate tonight (Jim Brochin vs. Kevin Carney) there was a question about the higher education bubble. Neither candidate was familiar with the term. Nor was the moderator, Towson University political science professor James C. Roberts.

For them, and anyone else who doesn't read Instapundit, Michael Barone summarizes the concept nicely:

Higher education bubble poised to burst

Imagine that you have a product whose price tag for decades rises faster than inflation. But people keep buying it because they're told that it will make them wealthier in the long run. Then suddenly they find it doesn't. Prices fall sharply, bankruptcies ensue, great institutions disappear.

Sound like the housing market? Yes, but it also sounds like what Glenn Reynolds, creator of instapundit.com, writing in The Examiner, has called "the higher education bubble."

Government-subsidized loans have injected money into higher education, as they did into housing, causing prices to balloon. But at some point people figure out they're not getting their money's worth, and the bubble bursts.

Here's video of Glenn talking about the subject: The Higher Education Bubble, and What Comes Next.