What is in store for the new graduates who have spent the big bucks on attaining education, or gone to extremes and are in debt for the so called "needed" education background?

Paying thousands of dollars a semester to cram into a crowded lecture hall with a thousand other to receive the distilled knowledge of a tenured professor doesn't make much sense when the same lectures can be accessed online.

The hyper-inflation of tuition is well documented. By any measure, the cost of college attendance has increased dramatically. Higher education tends to be debt financed. The student loan bubble may well be like the subprime mortgage bubble -- only worse.

Now it's two months after graduation. I have an Ivy League master's degree, but I certainly don't feel $60,000 smarter. In fact, I feel a bit like I've snapped out of the piper's trance, only after stepping off the cliff.

Just a generation or two ago, a person could establish himself in a career and climb the corporate ladder without a college degree. Today, however, things are very different.

While there are plenty of non-monetary benefits of getting a college degree, the economic benefits alone should assure anyone who has doubts.

There is neither a single nor a simple reason for the exploding cost of college. Quality higher education has always been relatively expensive. In fact, it is often more costly to deliver than what is paid by tuition.

As our country faces the economic, social, cultural, and global challenges of the 21st century, the way to keep the American dream within our grasp is to provide more, not less, access to higher education.

If a college degree is to indicate anything other than socio-economic status, then American public higher education must remain fully funded.

College tuition costs shot up again this fall, and students and their families are leaning more on the federal government to make higher education mor...