HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Freddie DeBoer: Boy, I Wonder Why College Is So Expensive. “This was no mere gym. This was a Gleaming Fitness Palace. Back in my younger, stupider days, I joined a fancy gym in Chicago. It was posh, with lots of young go-getter professional types piling in to do a little chiseling. Let me tell you: the CoRec puts that gym to shame. It makes that gym look like the old skanky weight room dungeon I used to go to at my local Y.”

And yet, it’s administrative bloat that accounts for the greater part of the college cost explosion. Oh, wait: “But never fear! If the massive investment in tight student abdominals does not move you, right across the street, they’re building a new Gleaming Palace! Not, sadly, an academic building. The new Center for Student Excellence and Leadership is explicitly not for academics, as it’s being called a ‘third space,’ apart from home and school, by the administrators who multiply across the campus like cicadas. What do you do, in a third space, in this time of economic malaise, stagnant wages, exploding student debt, and generational hopelessness? What’s a Center for Student Excellence and Leadership for, exactly? You know, I don’t have a fucking clue.”

Related: Universities Exist Primarily To Enrich Football Coaches.