An individual has all the reasons to defect if they believe that their time and money would be better spent, e.g., starting a company and profiting off of it rather than sinking their time and money into a degree.
Part of the reason I believe the education bubble is a bubble and will pop, is that the entire point of an accredited degree is to have a recognizable proxy for someone's intellectual capability. The ease at checking a person's ability prior to the internet and social media was in checking with their alma mater if they had the degree that they had and therefore if they were as capable as they claimed. Now it's even easier to check if someone has the intellectual capability by looking at their blog/github repo/facebook/twitter.
With that in mind, I think its only a matter of time before that starts to translate into educational institutions competing with industry for students.
Indeed, but the college degree is used for this because most of the former methods have been outlawed (or in the case of the high school diploma watered down to uselessness).
I don't find it impossible to imagine the government outlawing the new sort of Internet based investigations or enough people getting wise to the game to, well, game it.
If the label of failure rubs you the wrong way, take it as an incentive- buck up, get back in the fray, and try again until you're a success.
A number of people made more money by being in the housing market than was made by those who sat the whole thing out. The bubble was a loss in total but applying an overall process to an individual decision is not the easy-call that the author glibly claims it to be. A person can easily determine that wearing high-heals will be harder on their body than wearing flats. The calculations concerning a house in 2004 were much more complex and the calculations concerning whether to get a college education in 2011 are also more complex.
Of course you can - but how do you ensure that the other women in your office don't look down on you because you wear flats?
I'm not arguing that high heels are irrational at all. Far from it - I'm claiming the loss in status is worse than foot pain and thus it is rational for any individual to wear heels.