College admissions statistics that have been and are so critical to the high tuition universities, have finally begun to show signs of substantial turbulence in the university student marketplace. Even these purveyors of long-term student debt and didactic level college education are beginning to privately worry a change is underway! As human nature so often allows however, the prevailing belief in campus administration offices everywhere, is that nothing fundamental is really going to change. Not student loan availability. Not families with equity to back the almost always needed student loans. Not tuition rates, except that they will go up as always. Not government funding. Not students' sense of economic reality. Not even GM (now Government Motors)!

All across the academic world, universities are tracking results which indicate students who felt sometimes heavy competition as they applied for admission to their choice of schools, are, just a couple of months later after being accepted by one or more of their choices, declining enrollment 'for financial reasons'. Colleges online are coming of age. They have been questioned and tested. Now with economic conditions worsening in many countries around the globe, students are taking a breather while they explore the advantages of studying online. This will have a viral effect over the next two years. The outcome for brick-and-mortar campuses could be critical. How far students will go elsewhere to seek more favorable university experience solutions, of course, remains to be seen.

Students are learning, refreshingly, that there are options, yes, even preferred options, to the insane level of student debt imposed on students and their families for so many decades. There is always the community college option to help save expenses for a couple of years. There is also the option of colleges online. The advantages and freedoms of earning an on line degree can be significant and very seductive, once experienced. Frankly, I see a paradigm shift beginning. Unless a student needs socializing and, to put it like more than one PhD educator I have interviewed has said, 'some high priced transitional babysitting', most will have very little desire to return to their previous campus-bound status.

The educational establishment's Pandora's box has been opened. Once opened, as everyone has experienced, things will never be the same. Even the 'kings men' can't make it so.

For the newly developing online educational establishment to continue to impose similar tuition rates, now that the decades long infatuation with student loans is cracking as evidenced by this years trend reversing statistics, would appear to be text book predictable self destruction. Competition will drive down tuition rates. Why? How can it? To put it simply, absent the vestiges of the education establishment's past, there is no fiscal reason or excuse for what was once insanely high tuition. Any attempt will vaporize under the glare of the college online buying publics' scrutiny. For too many years, establishment universities have gotten fat and laughed all the way to the bank, as hard working graduates and dropouts alike have labored under the load of their student loan paybacks that I have personally seen amortized over thirty years, while unable to enjoy the fruits of their labors, save for their children's college, and in recent years even keep up with their mortgages! On line degrees are rapidly becoming more appealing and bargains are beginning to appear...a college online buyer's dream.