MICHAEL BARONE: American colleges and universities have grown bloated and dysfunctional.

American colleges, dating back to Harvard's founding in 1636, have been modeled on the residential colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. The idea is that students live on or near (sometimes breathtakingly beautiful) campuses, where they can learn from and interact with inspired teachers.

I'm somewhat amused by the Oxford analogy. My wife watches a lot of British television (Masterpiece Theater); one of her favorites is a murder mystery centered at Oxford. Unlike U.S. murder mysteries which usually feature a single killing, there are never less than 2 or 3 at Oxford.

American graduate universities, dating back to Johns Hopkins' founding in 1876, have been built on the German professional model. Students are taught by scholars whose Ph.D. theses represent original scholarship, expanding the frontiers of knowledge and learning.

Uh, huh. Like most of my graduate cohort, we worked on campus, we didn't live there.

The last half-century has seen a huge increase in the percentage of Americans who go to college and a huge increase in government aid to them.... And the huge tranches of government money have been largely mopped up by the ever-increasing cadres of administrators, ... counselors, facilitators, liaisons and coordinators their student loans pay for.

[W]ould they be better off paying for such services only as needed, as most other adults do?

As the bubble bursts, the answer to the last question is obvious.