Bubble U: High Point University?

Carol Matlack has a story in BusinessWeek in which she refers to High Point University as “BubbleU” due to the aggressive capital expenditures and highly leveraged finances of the private school in High Point, N.C. This caught my attention since I wrote about college tuition as “the next bubble.“

As an aside, there are several Duke connections in this story. Dr. Daniel Erb has gone to High Point University to start the School of Health Sciences. And Plato S. Wilson for whom the School of Commerce at High Point University is named, is a graduate of Duke and is the benefactor of a Trinity Scholarship at Duke (which covers tuition, room and board and mandatory fees) that is reserved for a student from High Point, N.C.

Is this story a matter of a small town, down on its luck being revitalized by the local university and townspeople who are willing to invest their money in their town, or the creation of BubbleU? Time will tell.