Blog Post #7

The dissolution of the imagined community which formed in the United States during the post-World War II era has caused privatization to return and gain an ever increasing role in society. Privatization of higher education will be the focus of this paper. Privatization in the United States will be compared to Germany because Germany has managed to maintain its sense of community. Thus, Germans continue to enjoy free higher education. Additionally, the multi-tiered education system has prevented the negative effects of increased government education goals, such as the college for all movement in the United States. The college for all movement in the United States has not only worsened the effects of privatization but it has caused many student accrue massive personal debt, a devaluated degree, and for a higher education bubble to form. The German system is capable of preventing this because of the aforementioned tiered system which sets quotas for each level of education thus preventing the society from producing too many college graduates and not enough, say, manufactory workers.
In order to support these claims I plan on using College Unbound by Jeffrey Selingo, Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson, and The Higher Education Bubble by Glenn Reynolds to form the center of my argument. Academic sources such as by Jamshidi and Breinig will fill in the gaps in my theories. I still need to find a better expert on the German education system. Perhaps my interview with my German friend this week will be able to assist me. I need to be able to show: increased enrollment,rising tuition rates, accumulation of debt, devaluating degrees, the concept of an educational bubble (like the housing bubble), and to be able to successfully tie in the German education system.