Philosophical-the future of B&M universities

[dfrecore]

My personal take is that higher education in the US will go down one of two paths:

1. Some future administration will change the rules and create a government subsidized "free" college education system so anyone who wants to will be able to get a traditional 4-year degree at a public college or university. Schools will probably be forced to accept all applicants as part of that. Of course, the ivy leagues and other top private schools will still remain elite, independent, and expensive (even more so since they won't be getting any government money.)

2. Due to a lack of funding, most public colleges will close their doors, though some will move to online-only. The top private schools will remain open and will cater purely to those who can afford it. This will widen the gap between social strata and link "quality of education" to social status so "normal people" will with a college degree will have online educations and wealthy people will have B&M education from a top university.

What leads you to believe that #2 will happen?  Like has something like this happened before?  When has education become less attainable?  Why would it become so in the future?  Just curious, I can't see how this could happen.  Someone comes in to fill the gap, the market fixes this problem (and would have fixed it long ago if the government hadn't intervened in the first place - schools wouldn't have had all kinds of money to fund crazy if the government hadn't of guaranteed loans).