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If you are an American parent, you must certainly be indulging in a lot of self pity these days. Gutted by real estate values, toxic paper, Ponzi schemes and severely affected by bear markets and burst bubbles, parents in our country have to now face a new issue – college tuition fee hike and the fast depleting quality of education that in no way seems worth the price.

Agreed, as long as there have been colleges, there have been skeptics crying sore anti-college rhetoric. However, the number of skeptics today seems to be on the rise which makes evident the fact that college education is indeed falling in value.

Arguments abound in popular media including the cable news, the Times and blogs. All of them talk about how there is minimal returns for the soaring college education cost. The quality of higher education is too lax and not worth the money spent.

The American colleges and institutions that stood tall in pride previously, today face corroded public faith and a barrage of criticism. James Altucher is a finance writer and venture capitalist from New York who has made frequent appearances in the media with respect to anti-college crusade.

Institutional scam is what he labels American higher education as. He says that schools charge exorbitant prices because only college graduates are hired by college graduates. This creates a closed system and students are saddled with massive debts.

While inflation in our country has gone up three fold and healthcare by six fold, college education prices have gone up tenfold leading to crippling student debt. Another popular venture capitalist with strong misgivings on colleges is the Silicon Valley royalty and billionaire, Peter Thiel.

This smart investor who was the co-founder of PayPal in the year 1998 and shareholder in Facebook made some smart anticipation and capitalized on it. Just before the dot.com bubble, he identified the signs and cashed in $100 million in venture capital at PayPal. Similarly, just before the 2007 housing market crash, his Clarium Capital Management hedge fund capitalized on a well timed bet.

This shrewd market analyst foresees a third bubble in higher education. He says this field shows all the hallmarks of speculative frenzy such as ignorant investors making investments funded by debt, over inflated prices and a wide spread, strong faith in increasing returns.

According to Altucher, his aim in rallying against college is to push for reforms in the system by reducing costs through reduced demands. He says that colleges have to change their ways if more number of students do not opt to enroll.

Thiel offered similar explanation for his fight against college which he calls 20 under 20. This is the Thiel fellowship program that will award $100,000 each to deserving twenty 19 year old students. These students will also benefit from some of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur’s mentorship. The condition here is that winners must not go anywhere near a college for two years.

Of course, there are skeptics who ardently criticize Thiel and Altucher who they say are trying to retard the intellectual development of participants and are misguiding them into funneling their energies towards getting rich rather than gaining knowledge.