If one intends to speculate about the effects of the bursting of the higher education bubble, one can gain some insight by examining universities that are already shrinking. The University of California (UC) system's state appropriation, for example, has decreased by almost a billion dollars since 2007-2008. In this article, the author talks about the higher education bubble by examining several institutions with widely varying missions that are already contracting. He looks at the mission statements of some universities to find out if student choice is fundamental to an academic "core," or if something else is at the heart of the mission of the modern or postmodern university. (Contains 27 footnotes.)